Title :
907-Plow - Anchorage´s approach to real-time snowplow tracking
Author :
Menard, Timothy ; Lund, John ; Miller, Jeffrey ; Petersen, Todd
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Syst. Eng., Univ. of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, AK, USA
Abstract :
We present a novel approach to tracking heavy machinery used as snowplows for the improvement of commuter safety. We have developed hardware designed for universal installation in snowplows that relay location and plow position data without human interaction over a cellular network to the real-time traffic simulator FreeSim [1-3]. FreeSim analyzes the data and overlays it onto Google Maps [4] by color-coded lines displaying the time elapsed since the roadway was last plowed. The plow position is determined utilizing magnetic fields between the plow blade and a stationary mount on the snowplow. By publicly displaying this information we aim to educate the end user with the current reported road conditions.
Keywords :
cellular radio; magnetic fields; real-time systems; road safety; snow; tracked vehicles; traffic engineering computing; FreeSim; Google Maps; anchorage approach; cellular network; color coded lines; commuter safety; hardware design; heavy machinery tracking; human interaction; magnetic fields; plow blade; plow position data; real-time snowplow tracking; real-time traffic simulator; relay location; road conditions; roadway; universal installation; Blades; Hall effect; Magnetic sensors; Roads; Snow; Vehicles;
Conference_Titel :
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), 2012 15th International IEEE Conference on
Conference_Location :
Anchorage, AK
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-3064-0
Electronic_ISBN :
2153-0009
DOI :
10.1109/ITSC.2012.6338793