I-Corps: iSpace Technology for Novel Traffic Light Managements

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

This I-Corps project proposes to further develop a technology for traffic signal management in transportation systems. This technology has been evolving through various research projects since 2002. The proposed technology provides a solution to meet demands for efficiency, scalability, security and robustness in the control and management of large-scale time-sensitive industrial applications. It has been founded on cooperative distributed control technologies and is capable of addressing the network-in-the-loop challenges, such as time delay, packet loss and bandwidth allocation, efficiently. It can effectively integrate distributed sensors, distributed actuators, distributed controllers, and communication networks to make intelligent decisions over a physically and/or virtually connected space. This space can be as small as a room or a building, or can be as big as a community, or even a city. Compared to the centralized counterpart, the proposed technology does not rely on a specialized control center but a group of distributed smart control modules which make intelligent decisions by exchanging information with local neighbors. It scales well as the network grows with plug-and-play capabilities, exhibits resilience to the communication delays and robustness to node and link failures. This technology is a platform technology that meets the critical needs of many industrial applications, such as: 1) traffic signal management in intelligent transportation systems, 2) energy management in building management systems, 3) electric vehicle charging strategies in a municipal parking deck or a community environment, 4) mobile devices power management in an aggregate level. Further development of this technology will impact all of these areas and facilitate the transition trend from centralized control to distributed control, which may bring about significant advances in the corresponding hardware and software development for industrial control systems.