Towards Personal Virtual Traffic Lights

Abstract

Traffic control management at intersections, a challenging and complex field of study, aims to strike a balance between safety and efficient traffic control. Nowadays, traffic control at intersections is typically done by traffic light systems which are not optimal and exhibit several drawbacks, such as poor efficiency and real-time adaptability. With the advent of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), vehicles are being equipped with state-of-the-art technology, enabling cooperative decision-making which will certainly overwhelm the available traffic control systems. This solution strongly penalizes users without such capabilities, namely pedestrians, cyclists, and other legacy vehicles. Therefore, in this work, a prototype based on an alternative technology to the standard vehicular communications, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), is presented. The proposed framework aims to integrate legacy and modern vehicular communication systems into a cohesive management system. In this framework, the movements of users at intersections are managed by a centralized controller which, through the use of networked retransmitters deployed at intersections, broadcasts alerts and virtual light signalization orders. Users receive the aforementioned information on their own smart devices, discarding the need for dedicated light signalization infrastructures. Field tests, carried out with a real-world implementation, validate the correct operation of the proposed framework.

Document type: Article

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The different versions of the original document can be found in:

• http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/info10010032 under the license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by

• http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/info10010032 under the license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

• https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/10/1/32/pdf under the license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

• http://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/10/1/32,

https://doaj.org/toc/2078-2489 under the license cc-by

• https://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/journals/information/information10.html#MartinsRSASFF19,

https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/10/1/32,

https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/10/1/32/pdf,

https://doi.org/10.3390/info10010032,

https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2910713631

• https://www.mdpi.com/2078-2489/10/1/32/pdf,

http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/info10010032

under the license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/