Researcher presents at the European Transport Conference, Dublin

European Transport Conference in Dublin Castle on 12^th October 2018.
Software Developer, Nithin Padmaprabhu, presented a paper titled “A GPS Cloud-Based IOT Solution for Emergency Vehicles to Bypass Traffic”. Nithin presented in the morning session of New Routes for Transport Planning under the Intelligent Mobility Management and Operation seminar. Session chair was David Connolly, SYSTRA, UK.
Many delegates from all over Europe attended the session, and the Q&A session concentrated on the ambulance driver inputs to the project, implementation in the Asia region and research aspects of TSSG’s recommended solution.

The world’s population has increased from 1.5 to 6.1 billion in the past 100 years, and traffic congestion is a significant concern for most metropolitan cities around the globe. Some of the main reasons for traffic congestions are high population density, increased number of vehicles active on the roads and inadequate infrastructure. Due to the high traffic congestion in major metropolitan cities, the mobility of emergency vehicles has become a critical issue and has gained considerable attention in most of the research communities. The proposed solution by TSSG (termed as an Intelligent Traffic Control System (ITCS)) is a new GPS-based system that is more efficient than current traffic control systems with zero infrastructure cost. ITCS system integrates an Android application and communication modules with an embedded system and power supply.
The ITCS is based on a simple principle: emergency vehicles can only move ahead if there is space and the signal remains green until the present vehicles have passed. This traffic prioritisation is achieved by creating zones at traffic junctions, and whenever there is a transition of a vehicle from one zone to another, there is an alert message sent to the traffic light to turn green. The alert message will be sent to traffic lights at a pre-defined distance of 40-50m away from the current traffic lights so that all other existing vehicles in front of the emergency vehicle can move freely and consequently; the traffic is cleared for an emergency. Therefore, this paper presents the implementation and testing of the ITCS.
Advantages over existing traffic control systems
There is no low-cost automated technology available in the current marketplace which can be used to facilitate free movement of emergency vehicles. In emergency scenarios, the proposed solution can be implemented and utilised to support and enhance traffic free flow in a cost-effective manner.
TSSG think DSRC (onboard unit) is the existing alternative technology which can be used to bypass the traffic, however this works only for short-range communication and cannot work from a distance of a few hundred meters. Also, there are few other disadvantages over proposed technology.
 
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