Traffic Monitoring
Trafsense is a traffic monitoring system with unique temporal and spatial resolution combined with groundbreaking low lifetime costs, even over longer stretches of road. Trafsense has several applications, including automatic detection of traffic incidents and precise individual vehicle tracking.
Automatic incident detection
Critical incidents such as stopped vehicles and wrong-way drivers are detected and forwarded together with the associated position in meters to the user (for example, the traffic management center). A stopped vehicle will be reported 10-15 seconds after the incident has occurred. Wrong-way drivers are reported at regular intervals as long as the vehicle is moving in the wrong direction. In addition, the system detects and reports on traffic jams per lane.
Tracking of single vehicles
The Trafsense system monitors the position, speed and lane of each individual vehicle by real-time analysis of vibrations created by the vehicle’s wheels. Trafsense assigns each vehicle a unique ID when it enters the monitored road section. All vehicles are then continuously monitored, including which lane each vehicle is currently in. Trafsense also detects all lane changes and enables indirect detection of lost items.
Trafsense’s advantages
- Trafsense’s fundamental strength is its ability to continuously monitor traffic along the monitored roadway. This is not affected by road configuration such as varying number of lanes.
- The sensor element in the Trafsense system is a passive fiber optic cable integrated into the road structure.
- No electrical or electronic components are exposed to the harsh environmental conditions along the road or in a tunnel.
- The performance of the Trafsense system is not affected by time of day, season, rain, sleet, hail, snow, fog, smoke or air pollution, nor by snow or ice covered roads.
- Trafsense is not affected by curves, gradients or variations in road lighting. The system does not require unobstructed line of sight.
- The lifetime cost of Trafsense is less than a third compared to conventional technologies for automated incident detection. High reliability and long service life reduce the need for maintenance initiated road closures.
- The physical measurement principle applied in Trafsense ensures fully anonymized personal data in accordance with EU’s GDPR directive. Hence, no anonymization process is required.
Reliable real-time data from Trafsense data provides a unique basis for automatic incident detection and for further data analysis. Such data are excellent basis for, for example, adaptive traffic management using variable message signs, information pushed to roads users and future cooperative intelligent transport systems (C-ITS).
A strong correlation has been demonstrated between driving conditions (visibility, road surface friction) and overall road user behavior. Such variations are easily registered using the Trafsense system.
Traffic patterns and statistics based on accurate data from Trafsense are reliable basis for modeling and planning of future road systems to improve safety and reduce accident risk and environmental footprint.
Additional areas of application for Trafsense are the detection of rockfalls, landslides and avalanches.
How Trafsense works
Trafsense is an autonomous smart sensor developed at the intersection of mobility/information and communication technologies. The system does not require vehicles to have any form of customized infrastructure on board, e.g. radio interface, smartphone, GPS, etc. Privacy is handeled by the physical measurement principle Trafsense is based on so that the EU’s GDPR directive is fulfilled.
The Trafsense system consists of two parts:
- The sensor cable is integrated in roadway and is completely passive, i.e. it contains no electrical cables or electronics. These kind of cable constructions has been developed by the commercial telecom industry and has a 25-year lifespan. The cable is pulled into a technical room or cabinet near the road to be monitored.
- The Trafsense interrogator contains all active components (electrical, electronic) and is rack-mounted in a technical room or cabinet along the road to be monitored. All hardware is solid-state and based on industrial telecom components with a 25-year lifespan. The data acquisition unit is therefore both reliable and easily accessible for maintenance. Interfaces towards the customer’s systems are implemented in the data acquisition unit where a local database can also be implemented for storing historical traffic data. Trafsense integrates seamlessly with commercial SCADA systems.
