Smart Zebra CrossingBring Safety into Your Pocket

Stefano Antinori (stefano.antinori@gmail.com)

The Reason WhyReasons behind the project are both subjective and objective➢ Objective*: In 2011 589 pedestrians have been killed

and 21.103 injured, in Italy only (270.000 dead in the world). 62,6% among dead and 88,5% among injured were walking on urban streets. 35% of accidents involving pedestrians occur on zebra crossing.

➢ Subjective: I think Italy is one of the worst countries for pedestrians, car drivers highly uneducated and unattended crossing poorly maintained.

You can find references and statistics about accidents data on (sorry no reference in English right now...) http://www.aci.it/fileadmin/documenti/studi_e_ricerche/dati_statistiche/incidenti/Indicatori_2011_versione_def..pdf

http://www.globochannel.com/wordpress/2013/05/03/incidenti-stradali-270-000-pedoni-uccisi-ogni-anno-nel-mondo/

Stop! It’s the LawItalian circulation laws already determine what is the proper behaviour of car drivers with respect to pedestrians:

Art. 191. Comportamento dei conducenti nei confronti dei pedoni

1. Quando il traffico non è regolato o da agenti o da semafori, i conducenti devono fermarsi quando i pedoni transitano sugli attraversamenti pedonali. Devono altresì dare la precedenza, rallentando e all’occorrenza fermandosi, ai pedoni che si accingono ad attraversare sui medesimi attraversamenti pedonali. Lo stesso obbligo sussiste per i conducenti che svoltano per inoltrarsi in un'altra strada al cui ingresso si trova un attraversamento pedonale, quando ai pedoni non sia vietato il passaggio.

2. Sulle strade sprovviste di attraversamenti pedonali i conducenti devono consentire al pedone, che abbia già iniziato l'attraversamento impegnando la carreggiata, di raggiungere il lato opposto in condizioni di sicurezza.

We want to enforce the concept of “pedestrian that already engaged the roadway” by exploiting sensors and we want to enforce the concept of “car drivers must stop when pedestrians are crossing” by using a sort of virtual semaphore.

You can find references to the italian circulation laws here (sorry again...no reference in English) http://www.aci.it/i-servizi/normative/codice-della-strada.html

(Smart)phone

Arduino board 20€

LDR Photo Sensor 0€

HC-06 BT Module 7€ Total 27€Offered by the City

The Ingredients

Your Budget

The RecipeLDR PhotoCell Sensor attached to Analog A0

HC-06 Module Tx attached to pin 9

HC-06 Module Rx attached to pin 8

We use the BT Modul to communicate the “free”

or “busy” state of the sensorif(lightLevel < threshold){

<snip>

int incomingByte = btSerial.read();

if(incomingByte == crossing){

btSerial.write(busyByte);

}

Serial.println("crossing...");

}

else if(lightLevel > threshold){

<snip>

int incomingByte = btSerial.read();

if(incomingByte == free){

btSerial.write(freeByte);

}

Serial.println("free..);

}

1) The pedestrian reaches zebra crossing area: BT enabled

devices begin to talk each other

Pedestrian rulesfree

busy2) The pedestrian engages the zebra crossing: light sensor triggers crossing event. State becomes busy.

3) The pedestrian devices is being instructed by the szc device to make it visible to cars in the area

busy

free4) The pedestrian start crossing street. It’s devices continues beaconing for a given time. As soon as the beacon is active it is visible to cars and vehicles in the proximity of the crossing

1) Cars in proximity of the crossroad poll for people crossing signals (pedestrian device beacon). While polling but not triggered by beacon car is free to pass: position 1 and 2

Car obeys

2) When pedestrian’s device is beaconing car’s or car driver’s device signals the presence: position 3 and 4

3)After a given time, when the beaconing ends and pedestrian crossed the road successfully, state of the crossing becomes free again

The current implementation of this device and the overall process is still at a laboratory and experimental stage.

Improvements can be done in the following areas:

➢ Reaction time: Time spent in pedestrian recognition and beaconing setup is still quite long. Some new algorithm on Arduino and BT devices communication should allow better times and faster beaconing

➢ WiFi Direct: The original idea was and is still to use a short-medium range communication protocol, P2P and local, to let devices communicate for beaconing. It is reasonably to think that this can be done but some failures in setting up WiFiDirect services for pedestrian devices let us change our mind and to through an Internet cloud based solution (not final at all)

➢ Devices: At the state of the art, this prototype needs smartphones for end users: even though for pedestrian this could not be an issue, because at the end of the day this is for his safety, for driver’s end this is no more valid. We think the solution here is to have a robust and standard device integrated with the car, capable to interact with events like “people crossing”, “crossing free”, etc. like shown before. The concept is the same, but the result is much stronger...

Open Points

The Drivers

Keep it SimpleThe simplest version of the framework is made of just an arduino board and one or more smartphone.

The use of short-medium range connectivity is a plus for poorly connected areas.

Keep it CheapThe well known low power consumption of arduino and bluetooth devices together with the 50-50 co sharing of resources between the city and the citizen allow to maintain (theoretically) low production and operating costs.

Keep it EffectiveThe user experience allows the user to know whether he is visible to the drivers or not.

The framework allows to be extended with signals on a per-use basis.

Keep it SmartWe can’t help but thinking to a future where cars will be part of one of the largest networks in the world, where actors are machines, and their interactions will help us living better

The Future

While networks and interoperability of personal (more and more) connected devices are increasing in numbers and geographical areas coverage, networks of interconnected machines are growing less faster.The reason is that without real life use cases (and lack of vision) this promising opportunity lacks of positive pressures.IMHO, cities are one of those fields where M2M can express its potentials.Mayors and administrators should really invest on this, with confidence that not only better services for citizens can arise but also an improved exploitation of civic assets and a brand new variety of services with fee, smarter, easier and more efficient

Smart Zebra CrossingBring Safety into Your Pocket

Thank you for your patience!

App Download: http://8thlayer-view.appspot.com/res/SmartCross.apk

Me: stefano.antinori@gmail.com

Project HP: http://8thlayer-view.appspot.com/scproject.jsp