Honeybee Social Foraging for Urban Traffic Control

Abstract Green time allocation scheduling for a single road traffic intersection is a dynamic resource allocation problem. In nature, a similar problem is found when animals need to allocate themselves across habitats. For instance, honeybees allocate more animals where there are more resources, when they are foraging for food. Based on these foraging ideas, we introduce a novel adaptive traffic light control strategy. The analogies between the two problems are discussed, and the proposed algorithm is compared with an optimal fixed-time controller. This bioinspired algorithm solves the green time allocation problem without the use of traffic models. This makes the solution feasible for a large-scale network. We also show on simulations, how an equilibrium state is reached under saturation and no saturation conditions.