New Algorithm Lets Self-Driving Cars Merge With Traffic Like Schools of Fish

A new algorithm from a team of Swiss researchers allows autonomous cars to merge with human traffic on highways with the flexibility of a school of fish. Researchers from the Distributed Intelligent Systems and Algorithms Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland developed a new way for autonomous cars to drive with human traffic. Their work is a major step forward for autonomous car algorithms, which have primarily turned autonomous cars into blocky platoons along highways. The algorithm allows for a connected network of different kinds and numbers of autonomous vehicles driving on multiple lanes, that can incorporate human-driven vehicles. Their algorithm was tested on the road for the first time in October, and paves the way for Autonet 2030's goal of deployment in 2020-2030.