An Embedded Video Sensor for a Smart Traffic Light

In this article, a motion sensor, based on a video embedded system, is presented. This sensor can detect if a person is on a crosswalk near a traffic light: if this event occurs while pedestrians have the stop sign, then a warning alarm to incoming drivers can be generated. The system innovation consists of the fact that no PC for video image processing is needed, but the motion sensor consists of a smart camera with embedded processing. This is obtained using an embedded system based on a high density FPGA programmable logic, which contains a soft-microprocessor-IP core and specific circuits dedicated to the execution of a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. The proposed framework is such that the phases of design, simulation, implementation, prototyping and debugging are closely related in a tested design flow that uses the most modern methodologies and efficient prototyping tools.