Eco-Friendly smart traffic controlling

system

Team Name: RUNIX

Name Registration Number Index Number

D.H.A.S. Kumarasinghe ASP/17/18/092 4109
D.T. Karunarathne ASB/17/18/121 4050
S.H.U.D. Siriwardhana ASP/17/18/103 4099
A.D.R.P. Wijesinghe ASP/17/18/113 4107
R.M.V. Deshan ASB/17/18/016 4033

FACULTY OF APPLIED SCIENCES

RAJARATA UNIVERSITY OF SRI LANKA
BATCH 17/18
 CONTEXT

The traffic congestion in urban areas has emerged as one of the most notable issues in the past
few decades due to the rapid rise of the number of vehicles in the country. Now days one of the biggest
problems in Sri Lanka at present is time wastage, fuel wastage and environmental pollution at traffic
lights caused by traffic around Colombo as well as other suburbs. Also, irregular traffic signal control
often leads to increased accidents. In a country like Sri Lanka, police-traffic controllers often make
mistakes in managing traffic, resulting in larger than normal traffic jams. There are many variables that
contribute to traffic congestion, such as the density of vehicles on the streets, human tendencies, social
behavior, and the geographic location of the roads. Especially, with the idea of smart city planning, it is
important to have a proper system to control the vehicular traffic in the city. For that, we have proposed
an adaptive traffic control system for 4-way intersections with the aim of reducing the traffic congestion
that is common in urban areas.

Below are some graphs showing air pollution in Sri Lanka in each urban area and the percentage of crude
oil imported into Sri Lanka. It can get a rough idea about the current fuel wastage and air pollution in Sri
Lanka.

Figure 1 : Air pollution in urban area

 Figure 2 : Oil imported into Sri Lanka

LITERATURE REVIEW (BACKGROUND & MOTIVATION)

The background to this project was the concept of eco-friendly smart cities. We are of the view
that such a project could provide a more sustainable solution to the current problems. We also based the
motivation for this project on the fact that fuel scarcity is currently prevailing in Sri Lanka.

Author K. Nellore et al. [2] classifies the road traffic in to recurring and non-recurring congestion.
Recurring congestion can be addressed easily as traffic pattern maintain regularity with respect to time
and place. However, the non-recurring congestion is difficult to identify as traffic pattern is not fixed and
is unpredictable. Non-recurring congestion occur due to unexpected situations such as climatic variation,
festivals and road accidents. In order to control the traffic, it is necessary to detect traffic density, Author
N K Jain et al. [3], describes various traffic monitoring system. One such technique is Situ traffic detector
technology. Based on installation of detector at or below the road surface, this technique can be further
divided into intrusive and non-intrusive technology. Intrusive technique causes disruption to the traffic
where as non-intrusive causes little or no disruption. In order to monitor the traffic, author suggest sensor
technique, in which various sensors are attached to the moving vehicles. These moving devices (vehicles)
are made to interact with central monitoring traffic system. Based on the sensor data central monitoring
system takes control over traffic movement. In another technique live video stream is feed from cameras
at a junction to collect traffic data. Using video and image processing traffic density can be calculated.

Author S. Parekh et al. [4] proposes a solution on similar lines for detecting the traffic density using
multiple IR sensors by categorizing the vehicle density on the lanes into three different levels. By
dividing the lanes into blocks and placing the sensor grids under the roads paves way for erroneous
results to creep in. An article in BBC News [5] accounted badly maintained roads as one of the reasons
for the high number of accidents. With the roads in that state, relying on sensor grids under the roads
would not only expose the grids to possible damages but will also lead to erroneous results when the
standards are not followed. Any modifications in the grids would mean a high maintenance cost given the
fact that the work on and due to the top layer would also account for the cost.
R. Sundar [6] also proposes a technique using Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) sensors. It equips
every vehicle with a RFID tag. When in the RFID reader’s range, the signal indicating its presence is
sent. This enables the system to track the number of vehicles and hence the congestion volume. Based on
the calculated values, it sets the lights accordingly. The main highlight of the solution is its ability

4 of vehicle clearance during emergencies. This is achieved by a ZigBee transmitter and receiver at the
vehicle and traffic junction respectively. To add to this, it is also designed to track down stolen vehicles
by matching the missing vehicles’ RFID tag with the RFID tags at the signal and if found alerts the
respective authorities. The major challenge in this solution is to issue a unique RFID tag for every vehicle
on-road, including the existing ones and also ensure a non-tamperable RFID tag.

S. Misbahuddin et al. [1], proposes IoT based traffic management solutions for smart cities. The proposed
technique controls traffic dynamically through smart phones operated by onsite traffic officer. Single
board computer such as Raspberry Pi adopted with networking feature is used to interface with external
circuit. The technique can be further improved if traffic data is automatically passed to the Raspberry Pi
unit, controlling lights at an intersection so that authorities can make decision quickly. Using a mobile
agent, under a vehicular ad hoc Network (VANET) automatically control of traffic is proposed by M.
Rath et al. [7]. The function of mobile agent based improved traffic control system (MITS) is triggered
when any smart vehicle enters the VANET zone. MITS counts the number of vehicles and if exceeds the
threshold value sensors triggers an alarm. This prevents further entry of vehicles in the network. In order
to prevent congestion vehicles are also rerouted depending on their choice. Increase in vehicle ownership
increases traffic management problem. Traditional method of traffic management includes monitoring of
vehicle speed through cameras, pollution check etc. Increase in number of vehicles causes inconvenience
to adopt above methods.

Author et al. [8] suggests IoV based traffic management system in order to control traffic, accident
detection, theft avoidance etc. However, author also mentioned drawback of IoV in traffic management
with respect to security and network failure. Sensors are placed at fixed position in order to collect the
data generated. These data are feed to central server in order to control and communicate with different
devices. Large number of vehicles on one area causes jams. Author Kumar et al. [9] suggests this jam can
be reduced if vehicles are guided with rerouting. The proposed method is demonstrated by dividing street
maps into small distinct maps. In order to find optimal path Ant colony algorithm is then applied. Fuzzy
logic-based traffic intensity calculation function is proposed to model heavy traffic.

On the similar lines a deep Q learning was also deployed in a solution given by X. Liang [10]. It aims on
optimizing the traffic light duration by taking real-time traffic information and dynamically adjusting the
duration accordingly. To overcome the large number of states in the traffic control system in vehicular
networks, the solution opts for a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to approximate the Q value. The
actions are modelled as a Markov decision process and the rewards are the cumulative waiting time
difference between two cycles. The authors also recommend a double dueling deep Q network for
handling complex traffic scenarios. They also claim a 20% reduction in the average waiting time. A major
challenge that the model could face would be erratic traffic in real-time for the model to respond to the
conditions within the stipulated time.

From the previous literature reviewed, an infrared (IR) sensor or many ultrasound sensors have been used
for the traffic control system where existing systems have a deficiency or challenge. The challenge of
traffic detection using many ultrasonic sensors reports the traffic condition to the microcontroller.
Another challenge of using ultrasound sensors for each road to reduce traffic congestion is its cost Those
used in the real world should be more reliable and cover the desired distance. Instead, using the sensor
and receiving data through the receiver seems to be more effective.
 PROBLEM STATEMENT
What encouraged us to do this research was the environmental damage, fuel wastage and time
wasted in traffic jams in Sri Lanka. In most cities in Sri Lanka, signal allocation is primarily based on
time. The timer system has a disadvantage, even when a road has very little traffic, the green sign is
allocated to the road until the cost of its timer drops to zero, while the traffic on any other road faces red.
Signals at that location cause congestion and loss of time for commuters. Also, we identified the problem
that the traffic controller made using image processing does not work properly during the night as well as
in the face of bad weather. The existing automatic traffic controllers in Sri Lanka are time limited and are
not based on real time data. All road lighting along the route is illuminated at some point regardless of the
actual need. This not only wastes electricity but also disturbs the natural habitats of the surrounding
animals.

AIM & OBJECTIVES

Our aim is getting a solution to the following current problems.

• Save on foreign exchange by reducing the crude oil import.

• Prevent air pollution by reducing the vehicle emissions.
• Reduce the loss of man-hours by preventing the time wasted by waiting in traffic jams for a long time.
• Minimizing damage caused by emergency traffic jams.

Our main objectives are as follows,

• Acquisition of traffic data at the selected intersection for the project by means of a demonstration sensor
• Identify the emergency vehicle using portable controller
• Develop the prototype traffic controlling unit
 References

[1] S. Misbahuddin, J. A. Zubairi, A. Saggaf, J. Basuni, S. A-Wadany and A. Al-Sofi, "IoT based
dynamic road traffic management for smart cities," in 2015 12th International Conference on High-
Capacity Optical Networks and Enabling/Emerging Technologies, HONET-ICT 2015, 2016.

[2] K. Nellore and G. P. Han cke, A survey on urban traffic management system using wireless sensor
networks, vol. 16, MDPI AG, 2016.

[3] N. K. Jain, R. K. Saini and P. Mittal, "A Review on Traffic Monitoring System Techniques," in Soft
Computing: Theories and Applications, Springer, 2019, pp. 569-577.

[4] S. Parekh, N. Dhami, S. Patel and J. Undavia, "Traffic Signal Automation Through IoT by Sensing
and Detecting Traffic Intensity Through IR Sensors," in Information and Communication Technology for
Intelligent Systems, Springer, 2019, pp. 53-65.

[5] BBC, "BBC News," BBC, 10 June 2016. [Online]. Available: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
asia-india-36496375. [Accessed 5 June 2019].

[6] R. Sundar, S. Hebbar and V. Golla, "Implementing intelligent traffic control system for congestion
control, ambulance clearance, and stolen vehicle detection," IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 15, no. 2, pp.
1109-1113, 1 2 2015.

[7] M. Rath, B. Pati and B. K. Pattanayak, "Mobile agent-based improved traffic control system in
VANET," in Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol. 771, Springer Verlag, 2019, pp. 261-269.

[8] T. T. Dandala, V. Krishnamurthy and R. Alwan, "Internet of Vehicles (IoV) for traffic management,"
in 2017 International Conference on Computer, Communication and Signal Processing (ICCCSP), 2017.

[9] P. M. Kumar, U. Devi G, G. Manogaran, R. Sundarasekar, N. Chilamkurti and R. Varatharajan, "Ant

colony optimization algorithm with Internet of Vehicles for intelligent traffic control system," Computer
Networks, vol. 144, pp. 154-162, 24 10 2018.

[10] X. Liang, X. Du, G. Wang and Z. Han, "A Deep Reinforcement Learning Network for Traffic Light
Cycle Control," IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 68, no. 2, pp. 1243-1253, 1 2 2019.