Overview
Traffic control systems cope with the ever increasing road traffic by determining the situation on the road network and by controlling traffic flows. Emerging cooperative techniques, such as vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, increase the knowledge about road traffic participants and open new channels for delivering information to road users.
However, most cooperative systems require large penetration rates in order to assure their functionality, making the first steps towards their deployment unattractive. COLOMBO works on overcoming this hurdle by focussing on two traffic management topics: traffic surveillance and advanced traffic light control algorithms for low penetration rates.
The project has the following objectives:
- Develop a traffic surveillance system based on vehicular communications, assuming low penetration rates
- Develop self-organising traffic light control systems based on swarm intelligence
- Improve possibilities to simulate such solutions by extending existing and delivering new open source software
- Focus on cost-efficiency and emission minimisation
For traffic simulation the open source simulator SUMO is used and for communication simulation NS-3 is used. To connect the two together the iTetris plaform will be used and extended when necessary. An educational toolkit will be released in the end of the project to share the methodology with interested stakeholders.
Funding
Results
Release of the PHEMlight model, which is a derivative of the PHEM model. It was integrated in the open source traffic simulator SUMO and can be used in real-time.
Various control and cooperative detection algorithms, documented either in publications or project deliverable documents.
Policy implications
COLOMBO aims to offer an alternative to traditional detection. This will save costs for policy makers as cooperative detection is cheaper both for installation and maintenance.
Other results
Addition of pedestrians to SUMO. Extensions to the ns-3 and iTETRIS platforms in a special Colombo branch.
Further deliverables can be found at:
http://www.colombo-fp7.eu/results_deliverables.php
Readiness
The project carries out fundamental research and is therefore still quite far from the market. Especially the fact that cooperative vehicles are currently almost non-existent is a barrier for COLOMBO to be deployed in the field. Parts of the total COLOMBO solution can however be used to enhance existing systems and the class B traffic control algorithm could work with navigation system data.