Self-driving autonomous cars,
cars without drivers,
will enter our roadways soon,
and, in the near future,
we'll have a few of them immersed in a sea
of many human drivers,
and we're exploring in our research
possibilities to use them for greater good.
[car engines]
So for instance, there's a phenomenon of traffic
waves,
the phantom traffic jam phenomenon
out of very, very tiny perturbations, actual
waves happen
in certain regimes of traffic flow
and you get this wave of brake lights
that go backwards on the road.
[car horns honking]
Now, autonomous vehicles can change that picture,
and it doesn't take many of them.
Even if you have a circular road,
where you have a traffic wave and you just
insert
one autonomous vehicle
that is properly controlled
you can actually have that
vehicle get rid of the wave
and bring the whole system back
to its state where you get a nice, uniform
flow.
So, in the near future, we'll have a few autonomous
vehicles on the road
and our research shows that if you connect
them properly, traffic runs more smoothly,
and therefore is much safer
and you save a lot of fuel.
