Low-cast smart traffic management system
Date
2020-05
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Abstract
In Ghana and other parts of Africa, most traffic management systems are implemented by
the use of a timer at each phase. This method of traffic management is inefficient because equal
length of green light is assigned to each lane at the intersection; resulting in long wait times for
vehicles behind a traffic light with the red signal on, especially when other lanes are vacant. This
project addresses problems such as the one stated in the previous sentence through designs and
implementation of a low-cost smart traffic management system. The project is carried out by the
use of electrical components that are affordable, easy to maintain and reliable. An inductive loop
is used as the vehicle detection device for each lane. Traffic density acquisition is then done using
an algorithm running on a single board computer, Raspberry Pi, to obtain the number of vehicles
on each lane. After the acquisition of traffic density, the data is processed to obtain the green light
length for a lane. After green light length determination, the traffic density acquired earlier is sent
to a database on a server via Wi-Fi to enable another microcontroller to use the data to execute
traffic coordination between a lane and its preceding lane. In testing the coordinated control
system, the statistical analysis showed that the coordinated traffic control between a lane and its
preceding lane can be improved to gain the optimal performance.
Description
Capstone Project submitted to the Department of Engineering, Ashesi University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering, May 2020
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Senior project
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Keywords
traffic lights, control systems, traffic management, Raspberry Pi, vehicle detection