Real Time Smart Traffic Control System Using Image Processing

in Embedded MATLAB

Aim:

The main aim of the project is to identify the real time traffic density in the roads and
automatic controlling of the signals and updating the same data in server using the MATLAB
embedded with microcontroller.

Objective:

The fact is that, the population of city and numbers of vehicles on the road are increasing
day by day. With increasing urban population and hence the number of vehicles, need of
controlling streets, highways and roads is major issue. The main reason behind todays traffic
problem is the techniques that are used for traffic management. Todays traffic management
system has no emphasis on live traffic scenario, which leads to inefficient traffic management
systems. This project has been implemented by using the Mat lab software and it aims to prevent
heavy traffic congestion. Moreover, for implementing this project Image processing technique is
used. At first, film of a lane is captured by a camera. A web camera is placed in a traffic lane that
will capture images of the road on which we want to control traffic. Then these images are
efficiently processed to know the traffic density. According to the processed data from mat lab,
the controller will send the command to the traffic LEDs to show particular time on the signal to
manage traffic.

Introduction:

Fast transportation systems and rapid transit systems are nerves of economic
developments for any nation. Mismanagement and traffic congestion results in long waiting
times, loss of fuel and money. It is therefore utmost necessary to have a fast, economical and
efficient traffic control system for national development. The monitoring and control of city
traffic is becoming a major problem in many countries. With the ever increasing number of
vehicles on the road, the Traffic Monitoring Authority has to find new methods of overcoming
such a problem. One way to improve traffic flow and Safety of the current transportation system
is to apply automation and Intelligent control methods. As the Number of road users constantly
increases, and resources provided by current infrastructures are limited, intelligent control of
traffic will become a very important issue in the future.

Traffic congestion may result due to heavy traffic at a junction. To avoid congestion
there are so many traffic management techniques available. But no technique is perfect by itself
as the real time situations are generally continuously changing and the system has to adapt itself
to change in the continuously changing circumstances. We have made an attempt to provide
some traffic management strategy which is self-changing in nature, so as to fit into continuously
changing real time traffic scenarios. In this system time is assigned to traffic light of particular
lane according to the traffic density on the road with priority given to ambulance. Also we can
indicate signal break in a particular lane. If there is an obstacle LCD is used to display the message
of obstacle detection to avoid inconvenience.

Existing Methods / Literature Survey

An Automated Vehicle Counting System Based on Blob Analysis for Traffic Surveillance [1].

Robust and reliable traffic surveillance system is an urgent need to improve traffic control
and management. Vehicle flow detection appears to be an important part in surveillance system.
The traffic flow shows the traffic state in fixed time interval and helps to manage and control
especially when theres a traffic jam. In this paper, we propose a traffic surveillance system for
vehicle counting. The proposed algorithm is composed of five steps: background subtraction,
blob detection, blob analysis, blob tracking and vehicle counting. A vehicle is modeled as a
rectangular patch and classified via blob analysis. By analyzing the blob of vehicles, the
meaningful features are extracted. Tracking moving targets is achieved by comparing the
extracted features and measuring the minimal distance between consecutive frames. The
experimental results show that the proposed system can provide real-time and useful
information for traffic surveillance.
Traffic Police standing at junction roads [2]

A traffic police standing at junctions, or at cross roads, is the simplest and the oldest
method used for the traffic management. It includes a human in the traffic ssytem. A trffic officer
is placed on each and every cross sections of roads, and he manually controls the traffic. A police
officer stands at middle of the road and monitoring the flow of traffic is shown in fig.1. The police
officer gives signals to the vehicle driver whether to drive or start. And he always monitors the
every road, and decides which lane has to give first priority. Based on his own knowledge on his
own takes the decisions, that which lane has to allow and which one to stop.

Fig.1. A Traffic police officer standing in Fig.2. Automatic traffic signals

middle of the road and controlling the
traffic.

This method is the most efficient among all other system, if traffic police officer monitors
traffic without error. As it includes a human as part of the system, the efficiency depends on, that
particular officer. So, this might not be good for heavy traffic conditions and all the day, as we
know humans always make mistakes.
Automatic Traffic signals [3]

The drawback of the above system will be removed with this automatic traffic signals
system. As like we seen every day, the automatic traffic signal system includes simple 3 color
traffic signals. Normally 120 seconds of green light is on for each lane. A yellow light will be
flashes, before the blue light, for 20 seconds, signaling the vehicle owners to start their vehicles
and be ready to go. When the green light is on in one lane then all other lanes will display a red
light, the automatic traffic signaling system is shown in the fig.2. Where red signal indicates stop,
yellow light signal indicates ready to go, and green light signal indicates go. The major problem
with this system is it cannot identify the amount of traffic in one particular line, so there is a
chance of traffic jam.

Proposed Method:

The following features are implemented in our proposed system

1. Priority based traffic clearance

2. Ambulance detection using Image processing
3. Safety message display on LCD
4. Red Signal break (Number plate detection)
5. If any obstacle in any particular lane then display ALERT message on LCD
Priority based traffic clearance:

Fig-2: Preview window Fig-3: Gray scale conversion

 Fig-4: Command window output

Transmitter Section:

Webcam PC With
MATLAB

Power MAX232 ZIGBEE

supply

12v
Adopter
Block diagram: Receiver

Red LED
zigbee

Microcontroller Green LED

Renesas RL78

Max232 Yellow LED

IR sensor

Buzzer

Power LCD
supply

Power supply:

Power
12V DC
supply
230V AC
5V DC

Step Bridge Filter Voltage

down rectifier
T/F regulator
Advantages:

Less hardware requirement

Less power consumption
Low cost

System specifications:

COMPONENTS USED:

1. PC with MATLAB 8.1

2. Logitech Camera
3. Microcontroller Renesas RL78
4. USB to UART
5. LCD
6. LED
7. Buzzer

SOFTWARE USED:

1. Matlab 8.1
2. Embedded C
3. Cubesuite plus
4. Orcad Capture
5. Renesas Flash Programmer
6. Hyperterminal

References:

[1] J. Melo, A. Naftel, A. Bernardino and J. Santos-Victor, "Detection and classification of

highway lanes using vehicle motion trajectories", IEEE Transactions on Intelligent
Transportation Systems, vol. 7, no. 2, (2006), pp. 188-200.
[2] Meng Cao, Anh Vu, Barth, M., "A Novel Omni-Directional Vision Sensing Technique for
Traffic Surveillance", IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference, 2007, pp. 678-
683. R.
[3] Cucchiara, M. Piccardi, and P. Mello, "Image analysis and rule based reasoning for a
traffic monitoring system," IEEE Trans. Intell. Transport. Syst., vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 119-130,
June 2002.
[4] Er. Kavneet Kaur, Vijay Kumar Banga Number Plate Recognition Using OCR Technique
IJRET: International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology eISSN: 2319-
1163 pISSN: 2321-7308 Volume: 02 Issue: 09 Sep-2013.