i DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTELLIGENT TRAFFIC CONTROL … · An intelligent traffic control system using Arduino Microcontroller and Infrared proximity (IR) sensor are used together to

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DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTELLIGENT TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS

USING ARDUINO MICROCONTROLLER

NORFATIN MURSHIDA BINTI MOHAMAD NORDIN

A project report submitted in partial fulfilment of the

requirements for the award of the degree of

Master of Science (Advanced Manufacturing Technology)

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

JANUARY 2016

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Bismillahirahmanirahim

I strongly dedicated this project to my beloved father (Mohammad Nordin Bin

Hashim), mother (Sarina Binti Din) and my siblings (Mohamad Nabil, Mohamad

Najib, Nafeesa, and Nuha Fahada), with their sincere prayers and endless support

afforded me to successfully accomplish this thesis.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I would like to thank Allah Almighty for blessing and giving

me strength to accomplish this thesis. Sincere appreciation to my supervisor Prof.

Madya Dr. Izman Sudin and also my co-supervisor Dr. Norizah Redzuan who constant

support during my study at UTM and greatly helped me until this project completed.

Other than that, the lecturer and technician who help me in completing the project, Dr.

Maziah and Mr.Rahim.

Deepest gratitude to my beloved father, mother, brothers and sister and all of my

family and friends for their real love, pray, spirit, continuous encouragement and

patience within this study period.

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ABSTRACT

Increasing number of vehicles on the road becomes a concern to road users

since it causes massive traffic congestion especially at the junction. It is not only

happen in Malaysia, but also around the world. Traffic congestion has contributed to

low productivity, pollution and energy losses. In addition, user loss time,

environment quality and road safety are also affected by traffic congestions. Most of

the existing traffic control system installed in Malaysia is proven not intelligent

enough to make smooth traffic flow in minimizing waiting time of vehicles and

maximizing number of vehicles flow in the respective lane. In this study, a new

design concept of traffic control system is studied. An intelligent traffic control

system using Arduino Microcontroller and Infrared proximity (IR) sensor are used

together to simulate the traffic flow at three junction road. Program code in Arduino

Integrated Development Environmentally (IDE) software was used to communicate

with the sensors. These systems use sensor to detect the absence and presence of

vehicles and sent the signal to the microcontroller. The decision was made based on

the queue length of vehicles at each road. A longer period of green signals will be

given to the lane which have long queue of vehicles. WITNESS software was used to

simulate and validate the performance of the proposed system. The cycle time is

reduced allowing more vehicles flow through the traffic and average waiting time of

vehicles for new system also decreased compare to current system. Current traffic

light shows average waiting time for vehicle at Traffic 1, Traffic 2 and Traffic 3 is

longer which are 10, 7 and 3 seconds compare to the new traffic light system which

reducing the average waiting time to 5, 2 and 1 seconds.

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ABSTRAK

Semakin banyak kenderaan di jalan raya yang menjadi kebimbangan

kepada pengguna jalan raya kerana ia menyebabkan kesesakan lalu lintas terutama di

persimpangan. Ia bukan sahaja berlaku di Malaysia, tetapi juga di seluruh dunia.

Kesesakan lalu lintas telah menyumbang kepada produktiviti yang rendah,

pencemaran dan tenaga kerugian. Di samping itu, masa kerugian pengguna, kualiti

alam sekitar dan keselamatan jalan raya juga dipengaruhi oleh kesesakan lalu lintas.

Kebanyakan sistem kawalan lalu lintas sedia ada yang dipasang di Malaysia terbukti

tidak cukup bijak untuk membuat aliran trafik yang lancar dalam mengurangkan

masa menunggu kenderaan dan memaksimumkan jumlah kenderaan mengalir di

lorong masing-masing. Dalam kajian ini, satu konsep reka bentuk baru sistem

kawalan trafik dikaji. Sistem kawalan trafik bijak menggunakan Arduino

mikropengawal dan kedudukan berhampiran inframerah (IR) sensor digunakan

bersama-sama untuk simulasi aliran trafik di tiga jalan simpang. Kod program dalam

Pembangunan Bersepadu Arduino alam perisian (IDE) telah digunakan untuk

berkomunikasi dengan sensor. Sistem ini menggunakan sensor untuk mengesan

ketiadaan dan kehadiran kenderaan dan menghantar isyarat kepada pengawal mikro.

Keputusan itu dibuat berdasarkan tempoh barisan jenis kenderaan di setiap jalan.

Tempoh isyarat hijau yang panjang akan diberikan kepada lorong yang mempunyai

barisan panjang kenderaan. Perisian WITNESS digunakan untuk mengsimulasikan

dan mengesahkan prestasi sistem yang dicadangkan. Masa kitaran dikurangkan

membolehkan lebih banyak kenderaan mengalir melalui masa lalu lintas dan purata

menunggu kenderaan untuk sistem baru juga menurun berbanding dengan sistem

semasa. Lampu isyarat semasa menunjukkan purata masa menunggu untuk

kenderaan di Traffic 1 , Trafik 2 dan Trafik 3 lebih panjang iaitu 10 , 7 dan 3 saat

berbanding dengan sistem lampu isyarat baru yang mengurangkan purata masa

menunggu hingga 5, 2 dan 1 saat.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER TITLE PAGE

DECLARATION ii

DEDICATION iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iv

ABSTRACT v

ABSTRAK vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

LIST OF TABLES x

LIST OF FIGURES xi

LIST OF SYMBOLS xiii

LIST OF APPENDICES xiv

1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Project Background 1

1.2 Problem Statement 2

1.3 Project Objective 4

1.4 Problem Stcope 5

1.5 Significant of Research 5

2 LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Introduction 6

2.2 Traffic Light Control System 6

2.3 Current Installation of Traffic Light Control in Malaysia 7

2.3.1 Timer 7

2.3.2 Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) 8

2.3.3 Microcontroller 10

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2.4 Traffic Control System Problems 11

2.5 Sosial, Economic and Ethical Impacts of Traffic

Congestion 12

2.6 An Overview of Traffic Light Control System 13

2.7 Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) 16

2.7.1 Components of PLC 16

2.7.2 PLC Operation 18

2.7.3 Applications of PLC 19

2.7.4 PLC Current Research 21

2.8 Arduino Microcontroller 22

2.8.1 Components of Arduino Microcontroller 22

2.8.2 Types of Arduino Microcontroller 24

2.8.3 Applications of Arduino Microcontroller 27

2.8.4 Arduino Current Research 29

3 METHODOLOGY 30

3.1 Introduction 30

3.2 Overall Research Methodology 30

3.3 Case Study 32

3.4 An Electronic Circuit Model 32

3.5 Arduino Intregrated Developement (IDE)Software 34

3.6 Traffic Light Sequence Cycle 36

3.6.1 Traffic Signal Control Flowchart 38

3.7 Important Measure for Developing Traffic Light System 40

3.8 Traffic Light Model in Real Application 41

3.9 Performances Evaluation 42

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 43

4.1 Introduction 43

4.2 Development of Hardware 43

4.2.1 Microcontroller 43

4.2.2 Sensor 46

4.2.3 Hardware Circuit Model 47

4.2.4 Intelligent System Block Diagram 48

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4.3 Input and Output Arduino Microcontroller 49

4.4 Programming Part for Traffic Control 53

4.4.1 Intelligent Traffic Light Control Program 53

4.5 Performances Validation 55

4.5.1 Simulation Modelling 56

4.5.1.1 Assumptions of Simulation Modelling 56

4.5.1.2 Operating Concditions of Traffic Control 57

4.5.1.3 Flow and Interface of the Model 57

4.5.2 Data Collection and Analysis 59

4.5.2.1 Average Waiting Time of Vehicles 59

4.5.2.2 Percentage of Idle Time 62

4.5.2.3 Percentage of Busy State 65

4.6 Discussion 68

5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 70

5.1 Introduction 70

5.2 Recommendation for Future Work 71

REFERENCES 72

APPENDICES 77- 100

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LIST OF TABLES

TABLE NO. TITLE PAGE

2.1 Research on Traffic Light Control System 14

2.2 PLC current research in the traffic light system 22

2.3 Arduino current research project 30

3.1 List of components 35

3.2 Suggestion times for green signal depend on volume

of vehicle at the road 41

4.1 Technical specification for Arduino Uno microcontroller 46

4.2 Input connection between Arduino and sensor 51

4.3 Output connection between Arduino and LED 51

4.4 Volume of car at each lane for average waiting time 61

4.5 Average waiting time for Fixed Time traffic control 62

4.6 Average waiting time for Intelligent Traffic control system 63

4.7 Volume of car at each lane for percentage of idle time 64

4.8 Percentages of Idle time for Fixed Time traffic control 65

4.9 Percentages of Idle time for Intelligent Traffic control 66

4.10 Volume of car at each lane for percentage busy state 67

4.11 Percentages of Busy State for Fixed Time traffic control 68

4.12 Percentages of Busy State for Intelligent Traffic control 69

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LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE NO. TITLE PAGE

2.1 Traffic light using timer 8

2.2 Common Traffic light using PLCs 9

2.3 Vehicle Actuation with use of microcontroller 10

2.4 PLC (Omron) 16

2.5 PLC operation block diagram 18

2.6 Bottle filing system 19

2.7 Batch mixing system 20

2.8 Arduino microcontroller board 23

2.9 Arduino Uno board 24

2.10 Arduino Mega board 25

2.11 Arduino Leonardo board 26

2.12 Arduino Nano board 26

2.13 Old School Air Conditioner (AC) Controller 27

2.14 iPhone Controlled Logging Robot 28

3.1 Overall step by step methodology 31

3.2 Prototype model of intelligent traffic light using

an electronic component 33

3.3 Arrangement of Sensor 33

3.4 Arduino Integrated development (IDE) software 36

3.5 Sequence of Green light turn ON at three junction 36

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3.6 Intelligent traffic phase flowchart 37

3.7 Traffic signal flowchart 39

3.8 Traffic light model 41

4.1 Arduino Uno microcontroller 44

4.2 Infrared sensor 46

4.3 Traffic light Electronic circuit Model 47

4.4 Intelligent System Block Diagram 48

4.5a Program code for Fixed Time traffic 51

4.5b Program code for Fixed Time traffic 51

4.5c Program code for Fixed Time traffic 52

4.5d Program code for Fixed Time traffic 52

4.6a Program code for Intelligent Traffic Control 54

4.6b Program code for Intelligent Traffic Control 54

4.6c Program code for Intelligent Traffic Control 55

4.7 Flowchart of the simulation model for Tarffic 1 58

4.8 Interface of WITNESS software for the simulation model 59

4.9 Graph of Average waiting time of vehicles for Fixed

Time traffic control 60

4.10 Graph of Average waiting time of vehicles for Intelligent

Traffic control 61

4.11 Graph of Percentages of idle time for Fixed Time traffic

control 63

4.12 Graph of Percentages of idle time for Intelligent Traffic

control 64

4.13 Graph of Percentages of busy state for Fixed Time traffic

control 66

4.14 Graph of Percentages of busy state for Intelligent Traffic

control 67

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LIST OF SYMBOLS

PLC - Programmable Logic controller

VA - Vehicel Actuation

CO2 - Carbon Dioxide

RFID - Radio Frequency Identification

I/O - Input/Output

CPU - Central Receiving Unit

GPS - Global Positioning System

USB - Universal

PWM - Pulse Width modulation

GND - Ground

AREF - Analog Reference

TX - Transmit

RX - Receive

IC - Integrated Circuit

AC - Alternating Current

DC - Direct Current

V - Voltage

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LIST OF APPENDICES

APPENDIX TITLE PAGE

Appendix A Arduino Uno Rev 3 Schematic 77

Appendix B Schematic view for Arduino

with electronic part 79

Appendix C Arduino board 81

Appendix D Arduino website 84

Appendix E Arduino IDE 86

Appendix F Arduino program structure 93

Appendix G Programming code 95

Appendix H Arduino programming code for Intelligent

Traffic control system 97

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Project Background

Traffic lights also called as traffic signals, traffic lamps, stop lights and robots

[1]. Technically, traffic light acts as a traffic control signals device that plays an

important role to the road users by giving signal at road intersections, pedestrian

crossings and other locations [2]. This signal used to control the traffic flows at the

road for smooth flow of vehicles.

Although traffic lights look simple and can be seen everywhere, their

presence is important for ensuring the safety and minimize waiting time for the road

users. It is proven that growing use of traffic lights to smooth the traffic flow can

reduce the number of accidents [3]. Traffic lights usually placed at town streets and

highways, and critically at the junctions. Functionality of the traffic light is usually

based on the pre-set time cycle or control mechanism like timer and computerized

system.

Traffic lights works by changing the light signal for the road users either to

stop or move [4]. There are three colours normally used which are green, red and

yellow [5]. Each colour gives difference meaning. The green light means the road

user can continue driving pass through the traffic light if there is no obstacle. The red

light means the road users need to stop their vehicle while yellow light warn the road

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users to prepare for stopping. Driving without stopping at the red light is an offence

and the road user will be compound for that action [6].

There are three types of traffic light control commonly installed in Malaysia

which is the Timer, Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and also Microcontroller

[7]. Timer is commonly used for controlling traffic flow at small town which has low

traffic flow. PLC usually used for setting fixed cycle time of traffic and

microcontroller is suitable for heavy flow traffic. The uses of PLC and

microcontroller systems are more complicated than the timer.

However, there are several limitations with microcontroller system such as it

requires more maintenance, higher installation cost by two or three times of preset

cycle time and also needs more inspection. On the other hand, PLC have some

disadvantages such as the need of skill programmer to program, debugging the PLC

sometimes consumes a lot of time and also PLC is designed by semiconductors,

which depends on thermal characteristics working condition [8]. This project focused

on Arduino technology which operates similar to the PLC and microcontroller

system to control traffic light switching sequence. It has been reported that Arduino

system is very much cheaper than PLC and microcontroller in terms of initial cost as

well as in maintenance. However, its capability has not been explored fully to control

traffic light.

1.2 Problem Statement

Traffic congestion has been one of the major problems encountered in large

cities. Traffic congestion usually depends on parameters such as season, weather,

time, day and also unpredictable situations such as construction activities, special

events or accidents [9]. All these measure should be taken onto the account so that

traffic congestion will not create bottleneck and delays such as long waiting times,

loss of fuel and money to the road users.

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As the cities become more developed, there will be more difficult in

monitoring and controlling of city traffic [10]. Many methods has been studied and

develop to reduce traffic congestion such as the construction of a new roads and

flyovers in the middle of the city, building of several rings such as inner ring road,

middle ring road and outer ring road, introduction of city trains such as the light

rapid transit (LRT), and monorails, restricting of large vehicles in the city during

peak hours, and also development of sophisticated traffic monitoring and control

systems [11].However, traffic congestion still happen especially in the bigr cities

during peak hour due to the limited infrastructure and mismanagement of the traffic

control systems.

Currently, traffic light control system that commonly installed in Malaysia

are timer, programmable logic controller (PLC) and microcontroller. They are

installing on the street based on the situation of the road or junctions. The problems

that usually faced by the current traffic light systems are [11]:

i. Heavy traffic light in the morning, before office hour and in the evening

Immediately, after office hour, increasing number of vehicles in the road

causes heavy traffic jams. This situation usually happens at the junctions on

main road. This causes long waiting time in the popular direction. The timer

is not intelligent to sense the presence of vehicles and thus the sequence of

traffic light remains the same following the preset time on the timer.

ii. No traffic, but still need to wait

Traffic light control functions according to the time that has been set in the

systems. At the certain junction sometime, when there is no car, but the road

users still need to wait for the signal to change from red to green. This

contributes to long waiting time for no reason.

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iii. Emergency car stuck in the traffic jam.

During peak hour, the emergency vehicle also will stick in traffic flow due to

the road user need to wait for the traffic signalto change from red to green.

This problem is more critical and should be avoided since it involves

with life and death issue.

From the above scenario, an alternative solution is needed to solve or reduce the

above problems. The proposed system should be relatively cheap to maintain and

yet reliable to handle traffic flows with minimum queue time/ length.

1.3 Project Objectives

The objectives of this project were as follows:

1. To develop a traffic control program based on Arduino microcontroller

system.

2. To validate functionality of the developed program using a physical circuit

model and confirm the performance via witness simulation software.

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