Probe Vehicle: A Low Cost Innovative and Promising Solution for Road Network Monitoring

Infrastructure monitoring is a major issue for road network operation. The objective is to collect accurate and up-to-date information that characterizes the road network state: travel time, congestion, accidents, hazard, traffic flow (O/D), environmental conditions, weather conditions, road conditions (surface and pavement), visibility etc. Historically, road network monitoring relies on vehicle observation from equipment installed on the infrastructure such as magnetic loops for speed and traffic flow measurement, cameras for incident or hazard detection, or weather stations for meteorological conditions assessment on a given location etc. In this approach the infrastructure plays the major role as an event detector. The evolution of V2X communication technologies, in-vehicle sensors and onboard electronics allows progressively reversing this paradigm. In the medium term it will be possible to substantially reduce the number of sensors on the infrastructure as they will be replaced by probe vehicles. This innovative approach carries many hopes in terms of accuracy and in real-time information updating, and thanks to the diversity of sensors that are embedded in recent vehicles, the same car can provide a wide range of information such as travel time, speed, obstacles, visibility distance, headways etc. From this evolution one can expect a significant reduction of investments and maintenance costs on infrastructure. Today, probe vehicles are primarily used for applications like traffic analysis, travel time estimation and congestion detection. But in the near future, they will be used for road distress monitoring, weather conditions monitoring, potentially hazardous areas detection, etc. In addition, recent developments on Smartphones make them a key element of the concept of probe vehicle as they concentrate communication, detection and data collection functions in a low cost device. In this paper the authors propose to present the concept, the key technologies, the applications that are available now and in the near future. They also present an overview of some experiments and achievements in France and the lessons that can be drawn.

• Record URL:
  • https://proceedings-seoul2015.piarc.org/ressources/files/6/IP0453-Ehrlich-E.pdf
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: https://www.piarc.org/en/order-library/25346-en-Proceedings%20of%20the%20XXVth%20World%20Road%20Congress%20-%20Seoul.htm
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Abstract reprinted with permission of the World Road Association – PIARC.
• Corporate Authors:

  World Road Association (PIARC)

  La Grande Arche, Paroi Nord, Niveau 5
  F-92055 La Defense Cedex,   France 
• Authors:
  • Ehrlich, J
  • Bacelar, A
  • Belloche, S
• Conference:
  • 25th World Road Congress
  • Location: Seoul , Korea, South
  • Date: 2015-11-3 to 2015-11-7
• Publication Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: Proceedings of the 25th World Road Congress - Seoul 2015: Roads and Mobility - Creating New Value from Transport

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Floating car data; Monitoring; Probe vehicles; Traffic data; Traffic surveillance
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01674205
• Record Type: Publication
• ISBN: 9782840604235
• Report/Paper Numbers: 0453
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jun 29 2018 4:33PM