  This paper presents a study on how cooperation versus non-cooperation, and
centralization versus distribution impact the performance of a traffic game of
autonomous vehicles. A model using a particle-based, Lagrange representation,
is developed, instead of a Eulerian, flow-based one, usual in routing problems
of the game-theoretical approach. This choice allows representation of
phenomena such as fuel exhaustion, vehicle collision, and wave propagation. The
elements necessary to represent interactions in a multi-agent transportation
system are defined, including a distributed, priority-based resource allocation
protocol, where resources are nodes and links in a spatial network and
individual routing strategies are performed. A fuel consumption dynamics is
developed in order to account for energy cost and vehicles having limited
range. The analysis shows that only the scenarios with cooperative resource
allocation can achieve optimal values of either collective cost or equity
coefficient, corresponding respectively to the centralized and to the
distributed cases.
