Maintaining the Traffic Control System - Phase II

Summary

This report discusses the development and implementation of new remote monitoring techniques to assist in the maintenance of modern traffic signals.

Researchers developed and implemented algorithms for hardware fault detection, based on traffic flow analysis, in a software system. The system also analyzes maintenance information generated by the traffic signals, and correlated it with anomalies in traffic flow. The system's performance was tested by analyzing traffic flow during normal operation and during periods when hardware faults were deliberately injected into the system on a set of signals that the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) generated.

The results showed the following: The traffic flow through signals does achieve a steady state under various operating conditions. Faults in the traffic signal hardware can be detected by monitoring the traffic flow rate. Such a system can markedly reduce the time needed to process information generated by traffic signals for maintenance purposes.

The final report can be accessed at https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14153/mndot.13786.