Home
Welcome to the Traffic Light System Wiki.
This project was created for the PAConsulting Raspberry Pi competition where our aim was to produce an idea on a Raspberry Pi system that could transform travel and transport.
Our software is used to reduce waiting times at a traffic light system by comparing and simulating many factors that affect traffic flow. It then calculates the most efficient traffic light cycle timings to use.
The Rasberry Pi in this case is used to control the traffic lights, and runs a web interface that allows an engineer to modify the variables of that traffic system.
Our team is called Team Lightning. We are a robotics and programming group from West Wales, and we have participated in numerous competitions such as FIRST Lego League and Technocamps.
Our team consists of two members. Although each of us worked mainly on individual parts, we all took part in developing the core components of the project.
Edward Upton (engiego)
- Project Management
- Primary Research
- Simulation programming (V2 Branch & original)
Ben Dodd (mitgobla)
- PyGame demo (branch).
- Secondary Research
- Simulation Programming (original)
Edward contacted numerous traffic light companies through e-mail to gain information on how current hired roadwork traffic light systems work. This information was vital for us to make sure our project would be useful to the current methods being used.
Furthermore, Edward captured video footage of waiting at traffic lights at roadworks which allowed us to model our simulations based on what factors we could physically see in the video.
Ben researched into UK government documents about vehicle and road statistics. This information was used to create distributions based on the data, such as how drivers behave differently at varying speeds.
Moreover, Ben looked into other factors such as the chances of someone being distracted, to the average speed reduction of vehicles during different weather conditions.
The entire project was developed over these stages:
- Initial brainstorming.
- First simulation programming for PA Consulting competition entry deadline.
- Re-write of simulation software, and development of demo program for the PA Consulting Finals