Evaluation Method for Vehicle Group Safety Based on Potential Field Theory at Signalized Intersection

The intersection is widely recognized as the most dangerous section because of the complex traffic environment, frequent traffic signals, and traffic violations. Therefore, Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication technology is established to improve road safety and traffic efficiency for the above problems. According to the V2X application, we present a potential energy model to establish the general characteristics of vehicle group safety, evaluate the safety situation of intersection and assist Intelligent and Connected Vehicle (ICV) in driving through intersection more safety and efficient. According to the research on traffic follow, the potential field theory was used to represent the potential energy. The resulting potential energy model is constructed as a superposition of disparate energies, which are boundary potential energy, vehicle potential energy, and velocity potential energy. The boundary potential energy prevents the vehicle from leaving the intersection area by becoming infinite at the intersection boundary lines. The vehicle potential energy is applied to maintain a safe distance for vehicles by establishing a potential that increases to infinite strength approaching any part of the vehicle. The vehicle velocity energy is established to indicate the velocity impact on potential energy. According to the contour line distribution of potential energy of several vehicles, the vehicle group safety is evaluated by analyzing the potential energy boundary of intersection vehicles. The vehicle group safety is assessed by the maximum potential energy of group vehicle at the same time and the intersection safety is evaluated by the vehicle group safety threshold during continuous time. We believe that this study is the first step of regional safety research.