Autonomous vehicles are becoming a reality in our modern society as prominent companies such as Google, Tesla, Audi, and Mercedes are developing prototypes and relevant legislation has already been introduced in 16 states. Currently, autonomous vehicles are designed to operate independently. However, providing additional information to autonomous vehicles such as how quickly the light will change would allow them to make more efficient decisions.
MAVIS (Model of Autonomous Vehicle Intersection System) is a platform used to test whether additional information would lead to greater efficiency. The system is composed of a scale model figure-8 track that simulates an intersection with a traffic light, two SAVs (Small Autonomous Vehicles) that can simulate real drivers, current autonomous vehicles, or augmented autonomous vehicles, and a Base Station that controls the stoplight and sends pertinent information to the SAVs. With this system, the efficiency of the SAVs in the current and augmented autonomous vehicle modes can be compared in order to prove or disprove the hypothesis.