Conclusion
We believe our project will serve as a viable improvement to traffic light systems and the waiting times for vehicles. By creating accurate simulations of an environment, it will mean the light cycle timings will be better suited to the traffic conditions at that location. This means traffic congestion will be reduced, and giving drivers a better experience when driving on these roads. Overall, these positive outcomes will contribute to improving traffic flow which will contribute to the economy, environment and citizen happiness.
There are many improvements we can make to the project for it to be used in a professional environment. Although we had rewritten the simulation code with a better module, it is still not as accurate as it could be. We can implement many more factors that affect traffic flow such as weather, the type of roadworks, multiple (2+) traffic lights, etc.
For this product to be implemented into current systems, it would require development of circuits that will allow the Raspberry Pi to communicate with the traffic lights already in use. This means we will need to contact an expert engineer of traffic lights so we can understand how the hardware works. Furthermore, the traffic light systems will require a local internet network so the road engineer can adjust the timings via their mobile phone, based on the conditions at that location.
We have shown passion throughout this competition and beyond, as we have been a team for over 5 years. We are extremely dedicated to producing high quality projects, that are not only use the latest technology, but are also based on real-world problems that affect us in our local area and further afield. For this competition, we have shown passion and enthusiasm by designing a project around the bad weather that affected us in autumn of 2018. We are keen to always work on our projects and to keep improving them up to a suitable standard for presentation.
Simplicity and clarity of build instructions: The propensity to encourage others by showing how the team created and built its project.
Our build instructions are written up to a standard used by other projects on GitHub. By using this service, we can present the instructions using Markdown language, which styles the text in an easy-to-read format. Moreover, we have used GitHub project boards, issues, and wiki pages to show the development of our project. The project board also allows us to easily organise bugs and improvements and delegate them to the contributors. GitHub keeps a history of all changes and improvements we have made to the project, so users are able to preview our previous work.
We have confidence in the project being a viable solution to improving the world. Although it will be started at a smaller scale in key areas of large traffic problems, it can be easily expanded to serve more areas across the country and the world. We would have to implement new code so that the software will comply with the traffic laws and conditions of other countries, meaning it is not restricted to just United Kingdom.
As mentioned earlier, by reducing the waiting times at traffic lights, it will mean vehicles will get to their destination faster which is beneficial for the economy (tourism and commercial) while also improving the happiness of vehicle drivers and passengers.
Commercial potential: Does the project have the propensity to develop and progress on a larger scale?
This project has a large potential to be developed and be used commercially. The only costs of our project was the Raspberry Pi, therefore this is an affordable solution to be implemented at a larger scale. However, other costs will have to be factored in such as costs of circuit boards which allow the Raspberry Pi to communicate with the traffic lights, to the cost of distributing the software.
