Cloud computing concept for Intelligent Transportation Systems

Abstract

In this paper a cloud computing based urban traffic control system is proposed. Its goals are to increase road throughput and optimise the traffic control for increased safety of the participants, reduced fuel consumption and carbon emissions. The urban vehicle control scenario assumes that the speed of each vehicle in the controlled area is set by an off-board control unit that supervises each traffic intersection. The software component responsible for that is called an Intersection Control Service (ICS). From the system's point of view, the vehicles are treated as cloud services and are discovered and invoked using a cloud computing methodology. Geographical multicast addressing is used to target all vehicles in the specified areas. ICSs are part of a city/region wide cloud system that coordinates flow of traffic between intersections. The system's optimisation objective is carried out on several planning planes simultaneously, the lowest being local to a single intersection and the highest being an entire city or region level. The ICS gathers traffic data from various sensors around the intersection, and from the vehicles themselves, creating a dynamic situation map which can be used to assess the road situation and perform short term predictions for vehicle control purposes.