DESIGN OF INTELLIGENT TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM USING IMAGE SEGMENTATION

Roadways are the most important mode of transport in the world. There has been a continuous increase in the number of vehicles all over the world, which has left the most important ingredient of the traffic management i.e. traffic lights outdated. Traffic congestion nowadays is more often than not caused by large red light delays as the switching time of traffic lights are predefined. There is a need for sophistication in the traffic light control where real time traffic conditions should be considered as an input parameter to the controller and the time delays should be decided accordingly. In nutshell, there is a need for an improved and optimized traffic control system. Present Traffic Light Controllers, based on microcontrollers and microprocessors uses the pre-defined hardware, which functions according to the program that does not have the flexibility of modification on real time basis. This proposed system makes use of embedded technology along with image processing techniques of Image segmentation to control traffic locally at a road intersection. A comparison based on Image contours is made between two states of a road, one being, where it is congested with heavy traffic and the other where it has significantly less traffic. It is an improvement over the prevalent existing traffic light control systems in terms of efficiency and overall average waiting time for vehicles. Intervals between the green, yellow and red states of the traffic signal are based on current traffic density, which optimizes traffic light switching and avoids traffi