What is it about?
Traffic flow sensors installed in and above the roadway utilize a variety of technologies, sometimes singularly and sometimes in combination. Sensors positioned in or below the road surface include inductive loops, magnetometers, and magnetic sensors (also referred to as magnetic detectors). The overhead-mounted sensors (those either directly above the traffic lanes or to the side of them) include video detection systems, microwave (presence-detecting radar and Doppler), acoustic, lidar, passive infrared, and ultrasound. This monograph discusses only traffic flow sensors. Other sensor types and applications such as weigh-in-motion and road-weather sensors are not addressed.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
This book describes the operation and gives examples of traffic flow sensors.. It includes sensor selection criteria, describes functioning of the various sensor technologies, provides strengths and limitations of each technology, and summarizes sensor installation and initialization processes. As such, Traffic Flow Sensors: Technologies, Operating Principles, and Archetypes prepares undergraduate and graduate students, civil and transportation engineers, and traffic management professionals, in general, to select and evaluate the accuracy and other performance characteristics of traffic flow sensors for a variety of applications that include signalized intersection control, travel time and speed notification, ramp metering, freeway-to-freeway metering, mainline metering, wrong-way vehicle detection, incident detection, and active transportation and demand management (i.e., active demand management, active traffic management, and active parking management).
Perspectives
Notwithstanding the importance of traffic flow sensors in traffic management, there are many additional sources of traffic data, including the ubiquitous global navigation satellite systems and Bluetooth-connected devices. As greater numbers of connected and automated vehicles enter the highways, the quantity and types of available data will increase dramatically, creating a need for big data analytics.
Dr Lawrence A Klein
University of California Los Angeles
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Traffic Flow Sensors: Technologies, Operating Principles, and Archetypes, June 2020, SPIE,
DOI: 10.1117/3.2566571.ch1.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
