Real-Time Bus Recognition for Adaptive Signal Control

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Real-Time Bus Recognition for Adaptive Signal Control

S. Smith / A. Mahendran / M. Hebert / X. Xie

The ability to detect buses in oncoming traffic in real-time offers unique opportunities to improve overall traffic flow in urban environments. Buses regularly disrupt traffic flow as they pickup and discharge passengers. Yet, if traffic flows at a given intersection are not simultaneously blocked in multiple directions, there are often traffic signal control decisions that can be taken adaptively to minimize these disruptive effects (e.g., by servicing cross traffic) and reduce overall traffic congestion. Existing adaptive traffic signal control systems do not attempt to recognize and act upon the presence of buses in incoming traffic streams. Alternatively, existing approaches to bus prioritization start from the assumption that bus movement trumps all other vehicles, give no attention to how disruptive it is to overall traffic flow to keep buses moving, and relies on additional hardware, both within the vehicles and at each intersection. We propose to investigate development of the capability to use video streams from commercial traffic cameras to detect the presence of buses in real-time and integrate the use this information into an adaptive traffic signal control scheme.