Vignesh Pandian, Research Assistant
How do you create intelligent pedestrian signals with a smartphone app and P2I communication?
Giving pedestrians a greater stand in traffic – that was the objective of my master thesis in Infrastructure Planning at Stuttgart University. Before coming to Germany, I worked as an Engineer in India and have thus knowledge of both sides: the planning and the execution of infrastructure projects.
Pedestrians first – traffic signals optimised for persons, not cars
In most cities of the world, motor vehicles are dominating traffic. This can be best seen at intersections with traffic signals. Very often, the control logic is set to improve traffic flow of the motorized vehicles – and not of the pedestrians. That is where my research comes in. I wanted to find a way to prioritize pedestrians, to reduce their waiting time at signals and, as a positive side effect, to make walking in cities more attractive. The idea was to transfer the concept of V2I to P2I communication, thus to create a way for pedestrians to “talk” to the infrastructure.
“In my master thesis, I found a way to reduce waiting times for pedestrians at traffic signals and to make walking in cities more attractive – by transferring the concept of Vehicle2Infrastructure to Pedestrian2Infrastructure communication.”
“Hello traffic light: I’ll be there in 1 minute!”
In my thesis I examined a scenario where pedestrians would define their intended route using a smartphone app. From this route and from the current GPS position, the app would know two things:
1. A pedestrian is approaching a traffic signal
2. Whether a pedestrian intends to cross the street or not