Cooperative traffic control based on greenhouse gases footprint minimization

Traffic control in major cities has consumed a lot of research efforts in the last years. Due to the increasing number of cars, the time spent in traffic can be significant. A large number of methods for reducing traffic jams were carried out, almost all by optimizing the traffic depending on the minimization of some metrics related exclusively to the traffic features (car numbers, speed of travel, distance, etc.). Unfortunately, very few cars have electric motors yet. So, one of the most dramatic effect of the traffic is the pollution, especially with greenhouse effect gases. The traffic control algorithms usually don't take into account this effect, so they can lead to greenhouse gases accumulation in some areas when traffic is redirected by these algorithms. In a previous paper we have presented the idea of using low energy small devices able to measure some greenhouse gases concentration for determining the pollution in some specific areas. These devices can connect via Bluetooth with mobile phones and can communicate the pollution levels. Thus, the pollution levels can be used as additional constraints in traffic control algorithms. In this paper we present a solution based on microcontroller devices which measures the greenhouse gases and act as agents. If the concentration of greenhouse gases increases, the devices can negotiate the penalization of the route depending on the destination, travel time, etc. Also, they can send the negotiation results to a central server, which can estimate if the accepted solution will generate further increases of gases concentration over an accepted level in other locations.