International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD)

Volume: 3 | Issue: 3 | Mar-Apr 2019 Available Online: www.ijtsrd.com e-ISSN: 2456 - 6470

Density Based Traffic Lightcontrol System using Raspberry Pi

Y. Himanth, B. V. Pavan Kumar, M. Lalitha Bhavani
Assistant Professor, ECE Department, ASI Institute of Technology & Engineering, Tadepalligudem, India

How to cite this paper: Y. Himanth | B.

ABSTRACT
V. Pavan Kumar | M. Lalitha Bhavani
In present days, vehicular traffic is increasing throughout the world, especially in
"Density Based Traffic Lightcontrol
urban areas. As the number of road user’s increase constantly a smart traffic
System using Raspberry Pi" Published in
control will become a very important issue in the future. Congestion in traffic is
International Journal of Trend in
becoming a serious issue. Many vehicles are waiting at the signal for a long time
Scientific Research and Development
due to this the time consumption is more for the human and there is a lot of
(ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-
problem for the people who go to their work and some to the business works.
6470, Volume-3 |
Issue-3, April 2019,
In existing system the traffic control is not according to the density, and is not
pp.1281-1285, URL:
reducing the effect of traffic in urban areas. The traffic signals are prepared
https://www.ijtsrd.c
previously fixed for some time only after that time the signal will be changed to
om/papers/ijtsrd23
another signal. This makes the other side roads delay for long time. In some
293.pdf IJTSRD23293
places traffic lights did not work properly.
Copyright © 2019 by author(s) and
In the proposed system by using the image processing along with the raspberry
International Journal of Trend in
pi, the vehicle count is measured and accordingly the traffic will be reduced.
Scientific Research and Development
Emergency vehicles like ambulance and fire are easily allowed from the traffic by
Journal. This is an Open Access article
using the RF transmitter and receiver. Ambulance like vehicles send the signal to
distributed under
the receiver and make the green signal to glow on that road. This makes the
the terms of the
safety of the people in the ambulance and this will be applicable to fire vehicles
Creative Commons
also. IR sensors are used to avoid the crossings of the road when the red light is
Attribution License (CC BY 4.0)
on. Traffic updates are monitored with help of density based traffic control
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
system.
by/4.0)
The hardware components used in the project are raspberry pi and modules like
camera, IR sensor, RF transmitter and receiver and actuator. These modules are
interfaced to raspberry pi to control the traffic and maintain the output to be
accurate. Software implementation is done by image processing technique back
ground subtraction method. The programming language used for implementing
is python language. By using this software and hardware components the
implementation is done by using VNC viewer application. The program is
previously dumped in the application and the module will run according to the
program.

Keywords: embeeded, traffic

I. INTRODUCTION II. METHODOLOGY
Traffic congestion is a relentless problem in many cities This traffic controller is designed with Raspberry Pi, Image
around the world. Congestion means a lost worker processing using python, Pi-Camera, IR sensor, motor and RF
productivity, trade opportunities, delivery delays. Traffic
lights which are of current technology use manual operating transmitter and receiver. Image processing is performed to
system for the time allocation and also require high convert the raw images into more accessible form.
maintenance during the operation. This makes more and Raspberry Pi is the main component which is used to control
more time lapsing and increase in the vehicular traffic. This all, it acts like a controller. Traffic is captured by the pi
proposed system results in making the traffic less and allow camera and this information is sent to pc. The PC is
the vehicles based upon the density on the road. connected to the Raspberry pi to do the hardware
implementation in which it controls the signal using traffic
The aim of the project is to reduce the traffic in areas where control system.IR sensor is used to activate the motor. The
there is a heavy density of vehicles by implementing motor with nails is placed below the traffic light to control
Raspberry pi operation along with image processing. the traffic when the red light is on. Emergency vehicles like
ambulance or any VIP vehicles are also allowed by using the
RF transmitter and receiver.

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III. BLOCK DIAGRAM If the density of the road is more, then it turns green light on
and if it is less then red light is turned on that road. So we
can control the traffic by implementing this method. In this
way the flow of the proposed system will be done.

V. DETAILED DESIGN
A. CAMERA MODULE
Raspberry Pi Camera Module with adjustable-focus is
compatible with the original one, supports all revisions of
the Pi. The 5 megapixel OV5647 sensor is the core of the
module.

The camera board attaches to the Raspberry Pi via cable.

There are only two connections to make: the cable needs to
be attached to the camera PCB, and to the Raspberry Pi itself.
Fig 3.1 Block diagram You need to get the cable the right way round, or the camera
will not work. On the camera PCB, the blue backing on the
The Functional block of the Density based traffic light control cable should face away from the PCB, and on the Raspberry
system is shown in the Fig.3.1. Here the Raspberry pi 3B+ is Pi it should face towards the Ethernet connection
interfaced with IR Sensor to detect the vehicles, Camera to
capture the vehicles on the road and the Motor which is
connected to IR sensor used to avoid the vehicles crossing
the road during red light. SD card is initially inserted in the
Raspberry pi.

WIFI module also interfaced with in the raspberry pi which

is used to connect the PC and the hardware kit. VNC viewer
is used as a tool to connect the Raspberry pi to the system.
Server is the system which is named as PC. Nails are
connected to motor to tilt when IR sensor detects the vehicle.

IV. FLOW CHART

Fig 5.1 Camera interfacing

B. IR SENSOR MODULE
Infrared sensor is having a transmitter and receiver in it.
Transmitter emits the IR rays which will strike the object.IR
sensor identifies the vehicle which crosses the road when
the red light is on. When the vehicle tries to cross the road,
motor is activated by IR sensor which is connected by the
nails. The nails get tilted by the motor so no vehicle can cross
the road when the red light is on.

The IR sensor is interfaced to raspberry pi with the wires. IR

sensor has 3 pins naming VCC, GROUND, OUT. VCC is
connected to motor which is used for rotating it and also
connected to GPIO2 pin of raspberry pi. GROUND is
connected to IC and the traffic lights. OUT pin is connected to
GPIO26 of raspberry pi.

It follows with initializing the camera and then capturing the

images. Back ground subtraction method of image
processing is done to know the count of vehicles.

This count is taken by the system and according to that the

function will work and the control of traffic takes place on
the road. If there is any emergency vehicle on the road then
it receives the signal from transmitter and allows the vehicle
by giving green light to the road otherwise the normal
Fig 5.2 IR interfacing
operation is performed on that road.

@ IJTSRD | Unique Paper ID - IJTSRD23293 | Volume – 3 | Issue – 3 | Mar-Apr 2019 Page: 1282
 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
These pins are used to rotate the motor when there is a E. TRAFFIC LIGHTS
vehicle crossing during red is light on. IR sensor has Traffic lights are used to control the vehicle congestion.
transmitter and receiver in it which is used to identify the These lights are operated with the help of raspberry pi
vehicles. When the vehicle strikes the sensor it transmits to which controls the system. When the vehicles are more on
receiver. So the motor can rotate and the nails are tilted with the road then green light will be allowed for some time and
the help of motor. IR sensor turns the LED in it which gives then the red light will glow after the road has less vehicles on
the notation that it detects the vehicle. it.

C. RF TRANMITTER AND RECEIVER MODULE

RF transmitter and receiver are with 434 MHz frequency is
used for transmitting signals from place to another place to
inform about the data. RF transmitter and receiver are used
for the vehicles like ambulance, fire and police. The
transmitter is connected to battery and the receiver will be
connected to raspberry pi module.

The RF transmitter is fixed in the vehicles, when these

vehicles got struck in the traffic, transmitter sends the
information to the receiver manually, by this action the
green light is allowed to that road which sends the vehicles
immediately. In this way the emergency vehicles are allowed
to save the life of the people who are in severe condition.

Fig 5.5 Interfacing traffic lights

VI. RESULTS
An innovative system for detecting and extracting vehicles in
traffic surveillance scenes is presented. This system involves
locating moving objects present in complex road scenes by
implementing an advanced background subtraction
methodology.

The innovation concerns a histogram-based filtering

procedure, which collects scatter background information
carried in a series of frames, at pixel level, generating
Fig 5.3 Interfacing RF TX and RX reliable instances of the actual background. The proposed
algorithm reconstructs a background instance on demand
D. MOTOR under any traffic conditions.
Motor is connected to VDD pin of IR sensor and to ground
pin raspberry pi. This motor is placed at the end of zebra The rationale in the approach is that of detecting the moving
crossing to avoid the vehicles crossing the road during red objects from the difference between the current frame and a
light. Nails are connected to motor to control the vehicles reference frame, often called "background image", or
crossing road when the red light is on. The motor turns on "background model". Background subtraction is mostly done
and start rotating. The nails which are connected to motor if the image in question is a part of a video stream.
will tilt upwards and make the vehicle stop. Background subtraction provides important cues for
numerous applications in computer vision, for example
surveillance tracking or human poses estimation.

Fig 5.4 Interfacing motor Fig 6.1 Interfacing traffic lights

@ IJTSRD | Unique Paper ID - IJTSRD23293 | Volume – 3 | Issue – 3 | Mar-Apr 2019 Page: 1283
 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
In the below fig. 6.1 the hardware components are interfaced From the fig. 6.5 the output of the camera is shown. The
to Raspberry pi and the Raspberry pi is connected to VNC vehicles are detected from the camera and image processing
viewer through Wi-Fi. technique is processed on the vehicles by making the boxes
on each vehicle and the count is known.

Fig 6.2 Interfacing traffic lights

Fig 6.6 IR sensor output

Fig 6.3 Hardware setup

Fig 6.7 RF Tx and Rx output

RF transmitter and receiver are used to allow the emergency

vehicles like ambulance, fire etc in traffic the signal from the
Fig6.4 interfacing camera vehicle is received by receiver and the green light will
allowed on that road.
Camera module gives the output of vehicles on the road. The
image converts into white spots by using back ground
subtraction method and decides the red or green signal to
that road.

Fig 6.8 Traffic lights output

Fig6.5 Camera output

@ IJTSRD | Unique Paper ID - IJTSRD23293 | Volume – 3 | Issue – 3 | Mar-Apr 2019 Page: 1284
 International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD) @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
Applications (EECEA) by Bilal Ghazal ; Khaled ElKhatib
; Khaled Chahine ; Mohamad Kherfan
[4] 2017 International Conference on Inventive
Computing and Informatics (ICICI) 2017 by R. Bhargavi
Devi ; D. Kavya Reddy ; E. Sravani ; Gaddam Srujan ;
Shiv Shankar ; Shubhro Chakrabartty
[5] 2017 1st International Conference on Intelligent
Systems and Information Management (ICISIM)
Year:2017 Authors: Swapnil Manohar Shinde
[6] 2017 International Conference on Energy,
Communication, Data Analytics and Soft Computing
Fig 6.9 Entire output
(ICECDS);Conference: 1-2 Aug. 2017 Date Added to
IEEE Xplore: 21 June 2018 Authors: Elizabeth
CONCLUSION
Basil,Prof.S.D.Sawant
In accordance with the traffic congestion in urban areas, we
designed a density based traffic control system by using [7] 2017 3rd International Conference on Electrical
Raspberry pi, IR sensor, Camera module, Image processing. Information and Communication Technology (EICT)
The camera module is installed at the starting of the road. byTaqi Tahmid ; Eklas Hossain
This gives the count of vehicles on the road, with the help of
[8] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/32327953
that count we can control the traffic by allowing the vehicles
1_An_IoT_based_Intelligent_Traffic_Congestion_Control
where the density is more. The system provides better
_System_for_Road_Crossings by Pampa Sadhukhan,
flexibility to manage the traffic. The information about the
Firoj Gazi
ambulance is also known by transmitting the signal and will
be displayed green light on the road. [9] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/30121453
When the vehicle tries to cross the road during red light, it 6_IoT_Based_Dynamic_Road_Traffic_Management_for_S
will get damaged by the nails connected to motor. Density mart_Cities [accessed Sep 11 2018].
based traffic light control system is productive and it reduces
[10] https://www.ijecs.in/index.php/ijecs/article/view/24
the traffic in urban areas, time consumption due to heavy
76 Online Traffic Light Control System G. Karthika S.
traffic.
Prabhu Ram, Article Date Published : 15 February 2017
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