The Phoenix area has been a testing ground for autonomous vehicles for a while.

Now, researchers at the University of Arizona are teaming up with colleagues at UC Berkeley, Rutgers, Temple and other institutions to figure out how to improve traffic by reducing congestion — and how that could impact energy usage for all cars.

Jonathan Sprinkle says by taking one car in a stream of lots of vehicles on a freeway and controlling its velocity, all of the other cars in that stream could also benefit. Sprinkle is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UA.

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