INDEX

Project HomePage

Project Proposal

Outsourcing Report
  1.Introduction
  2.Background
  3.Specification
  4.Testing
  5.Conclusion

References

Contents
1. Introduction
  1.1) Project Motivation
  1.2) Vision Statement
  1.3) Project Objectives and Scope
  1.4) Project End-Users

Project Introduction

This project is the implementation of an application simulating road traffic using models of common road junctions and driving behaviour. It involves researching traffic-modelling theories and researching how to program an accurate graphical display.

1.1. Project Motivation

Traffic systems are made up from vehicles, junctions, and roads connecting junctions with other junctions. An object-oriented approach to programming is ideal for this kind system. Each individual building block of the system is specified as an object and then a bank of interaction rules are programmed into the system. The resulting behaviour of the system as a whole can then be observed in the simulation. Traffic simulations produce results that influence multi-million pound decisions that council's take when planning road construction.

1.2. Vision Statement

The application will allow a subsection of a road network to be modelling in a matter of minutes and to be visually presented on the screen in a clear way. The model can then be animated through time with traffic shown drawn-to-scale. The application will provide an interface to specify traffic intensity levels before animation starts or to dynamically change it during animation. The application will also provide statistical results for any data that is run on the simulation. Finally, the code to the simulation will be publicly available, clear and documented to allow users to extend or change the simulation to fit their modelling criteria.

1.3. Project Objectives

The project aims to help people understand the behaviour of traffic in a visual way. It will be an application that can test and compare how different road set-ups influence traffic systems. The project will be a complete self-contained software product and the "visual" part of the project means it will contain both a simulation and animation component.

There will be five parts to the project.

  1. An interface to build any road network.
  2. An interface to describe what traffic data to supply to the network according to a time dimension.
  3. A simulation interface to watch the model run through time on the data supplied.
  4. A presentation of results of the simulation.
  5. Documentation on using the system and the projects background.

1.4. Project End-Users

Since there are many accurate simulations currently in use, this project is best suited as an educational tool. The focus of the project will be in the animation of traffic and animation allows easy interpretation of results to untrained observers. The project will also provide a simple and quick way to specify the layout of a road-network, and the ability to dynamically change setting as the animation runs.

Users:

  • Teachers as an education tool to show the complexities of traffic on a broader scale.
  • Pupils or the public wanting to model/visualise their local road-network.
  • Researchers wanting to expand a system to test a hypothesis about traffic.