A distributed protocol for motion coordination in free-range vehicular systems

This work extends our research on motion coordination of free-range vehicular systems based on concepts and results borrowed from resource allocation systems (RAS) theory, to vehicular systems with limited communication range among the vehicles. Similar to the earlier work, the employed model assumes the tessellation of the motion plane into cells, which are allocated to the traveling vehicles in a controlled manner that ensures collision-free and live motion. On the other hand, the limited communication range of the vehicles implies that full synchronization of their access to the considered cells is not possible any more, and yields new challenges for the deployed supervisory control policies. To enable the development of supervisory policies capable of providing the necessary partial synchronization of the cell allocation, we modify the structure of the adopted tessellation by allowing the concurrent occupation of a cell by up to two vehicles at a time, instead of only one, that was assumed earlier. This modification renders polynomially computable the relevant maximally permissive cell allocation policy, and it enables the implementation of this policy in the form of a distributed protocol that is feasible in the context of the communication constraints that are considered in this work.