Significance of Real-Time Systems in Intelligent Transportation Systems

Introduction

The technological advancements in the field of computer science and communications network have become extremely immense in order to make a stress free living. These advancements and improvements are focused on developing applications that are easy to use in real-time with co-ordinated system (Sumit Mallik 2014). Today, such applications are innumerable and developed in every field possible. One such highly developing application is in the field of road traffic management. Applications and services that are managed in real time in the field of transportation to provide a smart, safe and co-ordinated use of transport networks are the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). It is a broad area of research which combines information and technologies to solve day to day transportation related problems. The developments in this field have been drastically significant over the past decade. Initially, only few countries such as United States and European Union had proposed and implemented ITS concept (Alam Muhammad et al., 2016). However now, they have raised up against various issues which have subdued its success, such as systems not having enough expertise, not being properly integrated, not establishing appropriate master plan, or importantly, financial restrictions. The most common issues, that have been experience so far, are the compatibility and integration of the applications and concepts across nations due the difference in the environmental impacts, data acquisition, traffic rules and regulations etc. (Mashrur Chowdhury et al., 2017).

Several applications and innovations are developed in field of ITS to make hindrance free travelling experience to commuters (Fayaz, Danish 2018). The need to work effectively in real time must be addressed by these applications. The future of ITS and the way forward in the future have become a hot topic of research (Agachai Sumalee et al., 2018, A. B. Nkoro et al., 2018). In this chapter, two ITS applications that work efficiently in real time are explained in detailed way. Each application is an example from diverse area of implementation and technology. Both the applications work towards providing solution to traffic management.

The first application involves traffic management through traffic signal. In developing countries at present, the traffic signal works as per fixed phase time and time requires manual labor to operate it. Therefore, there is a need to develop a traffic control system by evaluating all the criteria necessary to properly manage traffic imitating experts in the field of transportation. This work proposes a unique algorithm for automated traffic signals using surveillance camera feed for controlling traffic in intersection. Such applications are already existing using image processing. (Prakash et al., 2018, Akoum Al., 2017, Prashant Jadhav et al., 2016). All the existing work proposes a new infrastructure to fit into their proposed work and provide solution specific to a location or scenario. The major uniqueness of the work is utilizing existing infrastructure, robust method of detection of vehicles and the algorithm proposed for Green phase of traffic signal. This chapter explains how the traffic signal function can be made fruitful by using real time information of exiting vehicle density to control traffic efficiently. The details of the work are discussed in the subsequent section.