Realtime Autonomous Traffic Signal Switching system

Objective: Traffic signal switching happens to be one the weakest link in the entire traffic flow system. The current traffic switching system relies on preset timing or a manual controller system based mechanism. We planned to optimise the traffic light switching system using Reinforcement learning in a non-intrusive method.

We thought of adapting the autonomous helicopter training mechanism to model the Traffic Switching system.

We have successfully integrated our q-learning algorithm with realtime traffic flow information provided by HERE maps API. We collected the data for 5 days, and then performed a comparative analysis (plots attached) on how much improvement in traffic flow our model can achieve in terms of avg. waiting time.

A suitable extension was to have large negative weights if important vehicles (ambulance, police, fire cars) gets stopped at signals. The algorithm adapts itself to provide a congestion free path for them as much as possible.

How to run the code :

OS requirement: *nix machine

Run this on terminal

To run the live demo :

$ java Main $(echo `node fetch_stats.js`)

To generate graphs :

$node script.js 
$make
$java Main dailytime.csv 
$sudo pip install -r requirements.txt 
$python plotting.py

Visualization

• Values in brackets next to the roads are traffic intensity values fetched via HERE-MAPS api.
• An ambulance is added(location randomly generated - RED/WHITE - MG Road to Kasturba Road) to indicate autonomous Traffic signals switching to provide congestion free path to important vehicles

Demo Video

Realtime Autonomous Traffic Signal Switching system - Demo </p>