Slot-Based Design Could Eliminate Traffic Lights

Less a fully autonomous system than an extension of cruise control, the slot-based network could take away the need to wait at traffic lights. "The basic idea is that actors in a system are grouped into batches, and the speed of their movement is carefully controlled to move them more efficiently through a space."

Carlo Ratti and Paolo Santi of MIT have released a study that examines how cars could communicate to navigate intersections without coming to a stop. The system relies on sensors that relay a vehicle's trajectory to a central computer, which can then control that vehicle's speed and group it with other cars before arriving in the intersection.

Essentially, writes Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan, "What Santi and Ratti are proposing is a super-intelligent piece of software that could take the basic model of a stoplight—cycling between stop and go—and speed it up," so that all vehicles continue through the intersections at slow but steady speeds. 

Of course, the article notes, slot-based design has to contend with the same barrier autonomous vehicles face: a human unwillingness to give up control.