Summary#
iTranSIM - Simulation-based Vehicle Location
By: Tino Morenz
Supervisor: Dr. René Meier
Public transport provides affordable, 'eco'-friendly transport in urban environments. With the advancements in computer technologies real-time passenger information (RTPI) are now available for passengers, helping them to plan their trips so they spend as little time as needed travelling.
To provide real time passenger information it is necessary to have information on vehicle positions, so that travel times can be calculated and presented to the passenger. The iTranSIM system aims to provide vehicle locations not based on physical measurements but solely based on statistical data. Instead of locating the real vehicle e.g. using GPS, a virtual vehicle is tracked in an online simulation of Dublin City. The online simulation can be supplied with real traffic data such as vehicle counts from induction loops to create a realistic model of the traffic.
To demonstrate the feasibility of this approach the iTranSIM system was designed and a proof-of-concept was implemented based on the iTransIT framework. This framework was developed by the Distributed Systems Group (DSG) at Trinity College Dublin and provides means of integrating different components of an intelligent transportation system (ITS) so that data can be exchanged between the systems. To simulate the traffic the microscopic traffic simulator SUMO (Simulation of Urban Mobility) is used. SUMO is an open source project, maintained by researchers at the Centre for Applied Informatics at the University of Cologne and the Institute of Transport Research at the German Aerospace Centre.
The accuracy of vehicle location based on simulation could not be evaluated yet because a vital part of the necessary infrastructure is not yet available: the vehicle count data from real induction loops. Thus all experiments described in this thesis are based on empirical traffic data, however as soon as live data becomes available the accuracy of the proposed method can be analysed without any changes to the proposed system. Possible means of performing such an evaluation are also included in this dissertation.
Complete Thesis#
"iTranSIM - Simulation-based Vehicle Location" by Tino Morenz