Development and Testing of an Automatic Turning Movement Identification System at Signalized Intersections

Kun Xu^1,2, Ping Yi^2,3*, Chun Shao³, Jialei Mao³

¹State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
²Intelligent Transportation System Research Center, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China 2Department of Civil Engineering, the University of Akron, Akron, USA.
³Department of Civil Engineering, the University of Akron, Akron, USA.

DOI: 10.4236/jtts.2013.34025                

Abstract

Vehicle turning movement data from signalized intersections is utilized for numerous applications in the field of transportation. Such applications include real-time adaptive signal control, dynamic traffic assignment, and traffic demand estimation. However, it is very time consuming and costly to obtain vehicle turning movement information manually. Previous efforts to simplify this process were focused on solving the problem using an O-D matrix, but this method proved to be inaccurate and unreliable with the existing data acquisition system. Another study involved the identification of vehicle turning movements from the detector information, but the presence of shared lanes led to uncertainties in vehicle matching, thus limiting application of the method only to intersections without shared lanes. In light of those unsuccessful attempts, this paper develops and tests a system called the Automatic Turning Movement Identification System (ATMIS), which estimates vehicle turning movements at a signalized intersection in real time, regardless of its geometry. The results from lab experiments as well as a field test show that the algorithm is very promising and may potentially be expanded for field applications.

Keywords

Turning Movement Identification; Signalized Intersection; Detector and Detection; Vehicle Matching; Lab Experiment and Field Test

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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