Intelligent traffic controller using image processing

Abstract

Traffic congestion has become significant problem in recent years with the ever increasing number of vehicles and poor management of traffic. Traffic patterns are not constant throughout the day. They are changing from time to time. Since present traffic controllers have fixed time intervals for signal lights, they could not provide a better solution. Computer vision can be used to create an intelligent traffic controller which can adapt its time intervals according to the real traffic. Several studies have been carried out based on the concept of real time image processing to manage the traffic. In current traffic controllers, wastage of effective green time is occurred, as many times fixed green time period which is assigned for a phase is larger than it actually needs. Hence the other roads at the intersection have to wait in vain, with more traffic, until that fixed green time period is over. In the proposed method real time traffic image sequences are analysed using image processing, in order to obtain actual traffic area. Then, time for green light is allocated according to that traffic area. Hence, wastage of effective green time is eliminated by the proposed method since it allocates time to green signal that is sufficient to pass the actual traffic presented on the road. Results reveals, effective green time that need to pass the traffic, is proportional to the road area covered by traffic at that time.