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Saturday, November 30, 2013

NU12 -by Jaime Mendejar - fuzzy logic traffic lights

Auto-Detect Traffic Light

Now-a-days, we see traffic lights that are more evolved in terms of making motorists aware of traffic light timings.  Specifically, most traffic lights are now equipped with a timing LED device which shows us how many seconds before red goes to green or before green goes to yellow then yellow to red.  This is key because it increases awareness in drivers on whether they should speed up or slow down in beating a light or to prepare to engage to drive when the clock is set to trigger the green light.  But sometimes, we end up watching the clock even though there are no cars on the lane that is green, so sometimes its inefficient.  At night, we just see yellow lights blinking meaning its anyone's ballgame, first come/first go.  But what if we had an auto-detect traffic light?  A traffic light that detects current volume of cars via video imaging.  If a queue is longer than the other lanes, the green light should go there, if there is traffic seen on the other side, meaning even if the queue is long but the crossing road is full, the traffic light would not set to green.  These are just a few scenarios that the traffic light can address, it would be more time efficient because it will trigger a constant green for a lane that have more vehicles and have a more continuous flow.  If the other lanes suddenly pile up or even if just 1 vehicle comes, the traffic light would compute the certain timing son when the right time to slow the active lane down and trigger the go on the other lane.  Once the lane is emptied, the other queue can now trigger again. This eliminates manual labor for traffic enforcers to  adjust to traffic flow, in fact, this is what they do when traffic jams are piling up during rush hours.  If the video imaging in traffic lights can do this for them, then they can focus their attention on more pressing matters such as traffic violators, smoke belchers etc.  (some traffic lights are time activated, some are cctv counter activated, maybe we have the timer based;   aha, when they switch to manual, te make apprehensions and more money.  that is more entrepreneurial, more MBA)  3.5

By Jaime Mendejar  

By Jaime Mendejar

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