A new age of driving performance is in the near future as researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) plan to remove stoplights from the picture. The study proposing to make red lights obsolete in upcoming years was published on Saturday in the journal PLoS One.
MIT researchers are now working on a project named ‘Revisiting street intersections using slot-based system’ that would be capable of removing traffic lights in order to double the amount of traffic usable in current roads.
The study’s purpose is to offer a way for cars to be more self-sufficient as it involves using sensor-laden vehicles that would communicate with each other, making them capable of following a routine driving.
The team of researchers developing the idea to increase the amount of traffic permitted on the road by making cars become more self-aware claim the red lights could become a thing of the past. As technology advances, so does its application to solve or improve every-day problems or circumstances that can be easily enhanced with the proper appliance of technologic tools.
The researchers involved in the study at MIT are trying to bring an interesting insight on how the cities of the future could provide the better usage of technology in order to improve the way people travel from one place to another.
The study also shows a way of using high-tech vehicles with sensors to remain equidistant from other cars as they travel along the road structures as well as four-way intersections.
A new approach on self-driving cars
The developing of the technology necessary to successfully achieve the goals set by MIT researchers is based on mathematical modeling, alongside the proper management of sophisticated technology.
A system with an advanced technology and no traffic lights control would increase the traffic flow for vehicles said the co-author of the study Carlo Ratti, director of the SENSEable City Lab in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
“An intersection is a difficult place because you have two flows competing for the same piece of real state,” said Carlo Ratti in a statement released in the journal PLoS One.
Even though researchers at MIT have a long way ahead of them before achieving the goal set to remove red lights from the road systems, the MIT acknowledges there’s much work before traffic lights can be eliminated. However, the approach taken to improve the way people travel by researchers shows an interesting outlook on how much car traveling could change in upcoming years.
Source: NHV