Project: Integrated VIdeo sensor & Smart CArd for intelligent Traffic control

Road transportation is responsible of CO injuries and fatalities, major atmospheric pollution, global greenhouse gas (7%) and CO energy consumption (23% in French Region “Ile de France"). The congestion phenomenon, recurrent in any urban area, has an estimated economic cost of 0,5% to 1% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). There exits a real risk that these nuisances will be worst in a near future as the growth of vehicle utilization will be dramatically fast (an estimation of 39% from 2000 to 2020 in France for example, much more in China). Traffic forecasts for the next 10 years show that if nothing is done, the costs of congestion will increase by 142 % to reach EUR 80 billion a year, approximately 1 % of Community GDP_x000D_Concerning the injuries, the French Report on investments choices and costs of nuisances “rapport Boiteux” estimates the external costs to 15 milliards euros in 2000 in France._x000D__x000D_As indicated during 2007’s Ministerial Conference in Sofia, congestion problem has to be analyzed from a strategic and global approach. In this framework, ITS has now very promising impacts: information tools, dynamic traffic management, dynamic infrastructure management…_x000D__x000D_Nowadays, systems used for applying cities traffic policies are based on very poor sensors data (volume, speed, occupancy) on some very limited areas of the road network. Moreover, these data are COly available for 4 wheels motorized vehicles; no data at all for pedestrian or 2 wheelers are available: the differentiation between categories of vehicles is poor. _x000D_ _x000D_Because of this limitation, the sensors is today the weakest link in developing new control strategies for new policies; limiting greenhouse effect gas for example could be addressed by limiting number of stops during cars travel. Enhancing bus priority could be imagined, knowing the real traffic state in front of the bus position. The management of the congestion could be dramatically enhanced by the mean of real demand data as the queue length measurements at intersection._x000D_ _x000D_Moreover, all existing traffic control systems are only based on these poor data. They have no capability to integrate efficiently new traffic data as queue length, two-wheelers or pedestrian demand. _x000D__x000D__x000D_The IVISCAT project aims at overcoming those limitations in building a low cost integrated video sensor for advanced measurements and at proposing an innovative and opened interface between the video based integrated sensor and current traffic controllers. _x000D__x000D_On one hand, a dedicated and low cost integrated video sensor will be designed and built. This intelligent sensor will make use of the latest progresses in term of video imagery and microcontrollers in order to fulfil the low cost high quality constraints that will allow large scale deployments (CMOS sensors and low costs, low power consumption microcontrollers dedicated to image processing). Enhanced video detection such as queue length measurements, spatial occupancy will be embedded into it._x000D__x000D_On the other hand, a smart and opened interface card will be designed to interface the integrated video sensors (but not limited to) with any existing traffic controller. The smart interface will provide capabilities for any current controller manufacturer to transform the enhanced video measurements into intelligible data depending of the utilization context._x000D__x000D_With this information, a regulation based on video sensors only will be implemented through ETRA Traffic Controllers. To do so, a first Level of Services(LoS) traffic application will be derived and implemented._x000D__x000D_As an ultimate step, an adaptive traffic control algorithm will be implemented within the smart interface. This adaptive control algorithm (CRONOS) will make full use of the video based advanced measurements and will demonstrate the full capability of the smart card to be used with current traffic controllers. The system will demonstrate its potential to reduce the effort needed to develop and COtain good traffic signal timings. _x000D__x000D_In a near future, this smart interface card will be used to establish communications between infrastructures and vehicles (V2I) opening the way to traffic information dissemination, collision avoidance, etc._x000D__x000D_A well-balanced consortium will ensure the success of this objective, an important Spanish urban traffic control manufacturer (ETRA), a French research institute dedicated to transportation management and safety (INRETS) and one well known French image processing software manufacturer in road doCO (Citilog)._x000D_ o Citilog will be in charge of building the smart video sensor with advanced traffic measurement and building the smart interface card._x000D_ o Etra will be in charge in integrating advanced saturation detection into its global traffic control system by mean of the smart interface card,_x000D_ o INRETS will integrate its adaptive system (CRONOS) into the smart interface card.

Acronym IVISCAT (Reference Number: 4274)
Duration 01/07/2008 - 31/12/2010
Project Topic IVISCAT project objective is to propose innovative urban traffic management solutions based on enhanced low cost video sensors. A new and effective way to address the market will be proposed and validated.
Project Results
(after finalisation)
CO results of the project consist in a new urban management system based on a new generation of smart video sensors, fully integrated and enable to provide advanced traffic data (such as real vehicles queue length measurement). The solution is based on a smart interface card which can host advanced traffic applications, taking benefit from the advanced data produced by the smart video sensor, and with the capacity to interface any traffic controller of the market in its native way.
Network Eurostars
Call Eurostars Cut-Off 1

Project partner

Number Name Role Country
3 CITILOG SA Coordinator France
3 ETRA Investigación y Desarrollo, S.A. Partner Spain
3 Institut National de Recherche sur les Transports et leur Sécurité Partner France