Frugal signal control using low resolution web-camera and traffic flow estimation

Due to rapid urbanization, large cities in developing countries have problems with heavy traffic congestion. International aid is being provided to construct modern traffic signal infrastructure. But often such an infrastructure does not work well due to the high operating and maintenance costs and the limited knowledge of the local engineers. In this paper, we propose a frugal signal control framework that uses image analysis to estimate traffic flows. It requires only low-cost Web cameras to support a signal control strategy based on the current traffic volume. We can estimate the traffic volumes of the roads near the traffic signals from a few observed points and then adjust the signal control. Through numerical experiments, we confirmed that the proposed framework can reduce an average travel time 20.6% compared to a fixed-time signal control even though the Web cameras are located at 500 m away from intersections.