CCEE Associate Professor Ali Hajbabaie recently appeared on news stations WCNC, CBS 17 and WRAL to discuss his research on adding a fourth light on traffic signals to help traffic flow with autonomous vehicles.
Earlier research examined how tapping into autonomous vehicles’ computing capabilities to communicate with each other and the computer that controls the intersection would help speed up traffic. The most recent research looks at how a white light would impact pedestrians.
“We’ve now expanded our computational modeling to account for foot traffic, and the results are extremely promising for both pedestrians and vehicles,” Hajbabaie said to WCNC.
Hajbabaie is interested in real-time optimization of large-scale complex engineering systems represented by models with a high degree of realism. His research is focused on traffic operations and control in the presence of connected human-driven and self-driving cars. Hajbabaie and his research group use multi-scale analysis, modeling, and optimization to improve traffic operations. His research is advancing our understanding of cooperative traffic control systems and contributes to the development of future mobility systems, including connected and automated vehicles.