PRE2018 3 Group14

Group Members

Name	Study	Student ID
Joost de Boer	Software Science	1016745
Yanic Dobler	Software Science	1007100
Leon Kersten	Software Science	1006966
Pietro Maschera	Psychology and Technology	1220953
Koen Vlaswinkel	Software Science	1016271

Problem statement

Traffic management and prediction is a major concern and industry all over the world. City planers are always on the lookout for new methods, algorithms and procedures to guide the ever-growing car masses through the narrow streets of urban areas. These engineers focus mostly on developing means of controlling traffic light switching and while it is an important area to optimize, it has one looming downfall: It can only dictate the paste and rythm at which traffic flows through a specific intersection and not how traffic is split among possible intersections. This is where our product comes in, instead of pushing the state of the art on traffic light control, we aim to develop methodologies to direct single cars to take an alternative route with less traffic. This is a trivial problem when applied to a single car, but quite an algorithmic challenge when all traffic tries to find alternative routes in real time and they are able to communicate their current location to each other.

Objectives

• To evaluate the current state of the art on individual traffic advice.
• To evaluate the current state of the art of traffic light control based on actuators.
• To investigate potentials and threats when the above technologies work alongside each other.
• To interpret real-life traffic data provided in real time to feed the simulation (below).
• To develop an algorithm to solve the aforementioned problem.
• To develop a traffic simulation showing the effects with and without the algorithm on heavy traffic in urban areas.

Target users

Our project aims to provide motorized traffic (with and hopefully without drivers) with individual traffic advice, hence our main target users are traffic users. However, we aim to develop an algorithm and a simulation to show the effect of the algorithm, not a user friendly interface to make the algorithm usable by the average car user. Hence self-driving car manufacturers, city planners and traffic management engineers are also part of our target users as they ought to profit from the algorithm and simulation software when solving their own challenges.

What do they require

In general our target audience needs a system which allows their car to calculate individualized traffic advice in their current environment with respect to surrounding cars and known road layout (& rules) but also considering unknown traffic light behavior given the ever changing shift in traffic as each car separately tries to find the optimal route.

Approach

Our approach will be based on mathematical and logical models with whom we aim to describe the traffic behavior around the vehicle and also derive the best possible advice for the individual vehicle. To do so we begin by understanding current models for traffic behavior and prediction. We then use this knowledge to formulate new models which fulfill our purpose. Using these models and real life traffic data a simulation is created, showing traffic with and without the created algorithm. The simulation will "probably" be made using openGL and java.

Milestones

• Evaluation of both main topics completed
• Complete report on opportunities and threats of their co-operation.
• Interpret real life traffic data to feed the simulation
• Develop functioning algorithm for the problem.
• Having a simulation prototype making use of real life traffic data.
• Combining everything together to create a working simulation showing the positive effects of the algorithm on urban traffic.