Principal Investigator(s):
Bapiraju Vinnakota, Former Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
Project summary:
The metro area contains a large number of traffic signals with advanced capabilities. These systems usually provide a traffic control engineer with maintenance information. However, an engineer is usually overwhelmed by the amount of information messaged by the signal systems. We demonstrated that traffic flow information gathered by these systems could be used to assist in their maintenance, and reduce the burden on the traffic control engineer. In the first phase of this research project implemented and demonstrated the capabilities of a tool which performs this function. We propose a second phase of research into developing a software tool to assist in the maintenance of traffic control systems in the Metro area. The goal of our project is to provide an integrated system for the Metro-wide maintenance of advanced traffic signal systems. The first phase of the project proved the viability of such a system, on a target set of Econolite controllers. The second phase of research will solve the issues that have been left open at the end of the first phase so as to achieve our goals. For example, our approach utilizes specific methods to gather data at the target intersections. The current version of the maintenance program requires manual intervention in terms of the data to be gathered. We propose to investigate methods to further automate the process of gathering data in specific configurations. We also propose to extend our approach to signal manufactured by the Traconex corp. We also propose to initiate extensive testing of our product over the entire period of the research project. This will have several benefits such as eliminating system bugs, enabling an investigation into the ability of the system to diagnose faults among others.