TRACER: In-vehicle, GPS-based, Wireless Technology for Traffic Surveillance and Management

The fundamental principle of intelligent transportation systems is to match the complexity of travel demands with advanced supply-side analysis, evaluation, management, and control strategies. A fundamental limitation is the lack of basic knowledge of travel demands at the network level. Modeling and sensor technology is primarily limited to aggregate parameters or micro-simulations based on aggregate distributions of behavior. Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are one of several available technologies which allow individual vehicle trajectories to be recorded and analyzed. Potential applications of GPS which are relevant to the ATMS Testbed are implementation in probe vehicles to deliver real-time performance data to complement loop and other sensor data and implementation in vehicles from sampled households to record route choice behavior. An Extensible GPS-based in-vehicle Data Collection Unit (EDCU) has been designed, tested, and applied in selected field tests. Each unit incorporates GPS, data logging capabilities, two-way wireless communications, and a user interface in an extensible system which eliminates driver interaction. Together with supporting software, this system is referred to as TRACER. The design and initial implementation tests Testbed are presented herein. This research is a contination in PATH MOU 3006; se;lected portions of the interim report for that MOU are repeated here to provide a complete overview of the research effort.