Smart Traffic Lights Using IoT Technologies: Project Concept and Progress

The rural exodus and population growth have led to the rapid expansion of cities without sometimes developing road infrastructure. This situation is at the origin of congestion in road traffic with a very high number of vehicles. In Africa, cities that have the financial means often use traffic lights with a predefined traffic plan which can be ineffective at sometimes of the day. In this paper, we propose a concept of a wireless traffic light terminal, connected and self-sufficient in energy, for installation at intersections without public works on the road. This traffic light terminal is accessible remotely from police stations for its supervision and control. Thus, traffic management at an intersection is carried out remotely and in real time by an agent who selects a traffic plan adapted to the current situation. The objective is to centralize, with few personnel, the management of several intersections equipped with traffic light terminals, for better overall regulation of road traffic at low costs. Our work resulted in a proof of concept, for a four-lane crossroads, made with four Arduino electronic boards, four Lora wireless modules, a Raspberry Pi microcomputer, a camera and a 4G modem. For the software part, a server application developed with the node-red language, on the Raspberry Pi electronic card, provides the graphical interface for monitoring and control. The proposed system integrates a Cloud service that makes the human–machine interface for supervision and control remotely accessible via the Internet.