Virtual induction loops using smartphones for urban traffic control systems

Growing traffic in ever congested urban cities can be managed by traffic control systems which monitor and forecast the traffic status and optimises the control strategy according to traffic flow. Such systems use input from inductive loop detectors which are costly to install and maintain. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate a novice software based solution called Virtual Induction Loops using a smartphone application and a central server. We also identify how current urban traffic control systems can benefit from such a dynamic solution.