ESE Seminar: “Towards Socially-Aware Autonomy for Mobility-Efficient Smart Cities”

As cities grow everywhere, and urban roadways become overburdened, efficient strategies are required for improving mobility. With the prevalence of smart sensing and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as smartphones and smart intersections, the physical infrastructures of our cities are being connected to the cyber world. As a result, cities are becoming smart. Moreover, with the emergence of new and inevitable technologies, such as autonomous and connected vehicles, mobility on demand systems, and electric vehicles, smart cities are rapidly evolving. As we experience the arrival of such technologies, there is an opportunity to reclaim urban mobility. However, a blind utilization of these technologies may deflect us from reaching this goal. In my research, I leverage the connectivity that is inherent in smart cities as well as the opportunities that new technologies such as autonomous and connected vehicles provide, to study the efficient operation of smart cities via management strategies that can guarantee overall societal benefits.

In this talk, I will focus on the societal-scale mobility implications of the increased deployment of autonomous and connected vehicles in mixed-autonomy traffic networks, where both human-driven and autonomous vehicles will coexist on the roads. I will first talk about the mobility implications of selfish autonomy, in which autonomous cars are not aware of their overall impact and simply attempt to optimize their own travel benefits. In this context, I will introduce conditions under which an increase in the fraction of autonomous vehicles on a traffic network, even when operating selfishly, results in increased societal mobility benefits. Conversely, I will show that if these conditions do not hold, overall network mobility may degrade as the fraction of autonomous vehicles increases. Having shown the negative consequences that the increased deployment of autonomous and connected vehicles may have on the operation of traffic networks, I will further discuss the use of traffic management strategies, such as pricing, which can guarantee the overall societal-scale efficiency of traffic networks with mixed vehicle autonomy.