675 Instrumentation, signals, and control in transportation applications

Instructor: B. Coifman, Coifman.1@OSU.edu

Fall 2009, days/time TuTh 12:30-1:48, Bo 437

Undergraduate and Graduate, 3 credit hours

  • office hours Tu Th 1:48-2:48 in Hi 491b, (starting briefly right after lecture in the classroom then migrating to my office) and by appointment

    Preamble

    Signals and disturbances are continually propagating through the traffic stream and we never notice them. Consider the animation to the left, it shows the evolution of the traffic state on a freeway, each circle is a different car. Notice that the vehicles move forward while the stop wave moves backwards. The image in the top right shows a frame that was used for the data extraction. In this class we will use engineering tools to come to understand what is going on and why.

    Description

    An interdisciplinary course bringing together electrical engineering tools and transportation applications. Students will gain valuable experience working in teams while learning traffic flow, surveillance and control.

    This course will use hundreds of inductive sensors deployed along 14 miles of I-70/71 as well as instrumented vehicles (GPS position, radar distance sensors, etc.) to gain an understanding of what happens on the freeway. After quickly learning the basics of traffic flow theory, students will discover that signals and waves propagate through the traffic stream and learn how to work with this information. The course will also address instrumentation and data management.

    Course projects can focus on such items as the propagation of waves in the traffic stream or the use of distance measuring equipment on probe vehicles.

    Lectures will include a hands-on introduction to using Matlab effectively and manipulating data efficiently.

    Success in the employment world depends on your ability to adapt and learn from every opportunity. This course will introduce you to new analytical tools that should prove beneficial in many situations. For example, no matter what your career path may be, you will have to mange large quantities of data. This course will help you learn the art of choosing the right data structures in a computer program that will greatly simplify the problem.

    Finally, good performance in this class could lead to employment either as a GRA or an undergraduate researcher. the material covered is the cornerstone of a growing research program here at OSU.

    Who should attend- EE

    This course will be of interest to any electrical engineering student because it will apply electrical engineering skills that you have developed through out your education career. Furthermore, it will help you develop valuable analytical skills. While this course focuses on transportation applications, the problem solving techniques associated with moving people and goods can be transferred to the other areas of electrical engineering.

    Who should attend- CE

    Students with an interest in transportation systems or flows in general will be well served by this course. You will be introduced to traffic flow theory and be able to see it hands on. Again, it will apply engineering skills that you have developed through out your education career and it will help you develop valuable analytical skills.

    Prerequisites

    They boil down to some familiarity with computer programming and a willingness to learn. Consult the instructor for written permission (which should not be a problem) if you do not meet the official prerequisites.

    Administrative stuff

  • syllabus.pdf

    Reference stuff

  • Traffic Flow Theory Monograph

  • A wiki overview of traffic flow theory (perhaps a good intro but not an end point)
  • A wiki overview of shockwaves (perhaps a good intro but not an end point)

  • Matlab student version
  • Matlab campus site license (i.e., you can pick it up for about $5 last time I checked)

  • Examples of various traffic control devices
  • Examples of loop detectors
  • Shock wave animations
  • Traffic Detector Handbook, V1
  • Traffic Detector Handbook, V2
  • On procrastination

  • Committee on Academic Misconduct suggestions

  • TRIS on line transportation publication search

  • ITE Membership page
  • ASCE Membership page
  • IEEE Membership page
  • OTEC conference page

    Homework

  • Loop data, lecture 3
  • Voter registration info (will have no impact on your grade, but perhaps a big impact on your future)
  • Solutions to HW #1, lecture 5 (remember, annotate fmsloadr2class.m, the hw1solnAlternateVersions are just FYI)
  • Still more alternate solutions to HW #1, lecture 5. A few students stumbled on to textread, which works well for the one hour of data, but would likely choke on 24 hrs. So I went back and came up with these variations that borrow ideas from textread and run much quicker than the other posted solutions. The two versions that use strread are employing a lower level i/o function and are based on how textread works (hum... you mean we can read and debug the built in matlab functions too? A: Sometimes yes, but sometimes they are compiled and you cannot). The other file is only half composed, and uses textscan. I've done the chunking part, but none of the actual sorting or parsing, what you would need to do in the omitted portion SHOULD be clear (but feel free to ask if it isn't). As with the other alternate solutions, these are FYI, but they employ great tricks to help you build your toolbox.
  • Data for HW #2, lecture 5
  • Solutions to HW #2, lecture 7
  • Data for HW #3, lecture 7
  • Solutions to HW #3, lecture 9
  • Solutions to HW #4, lecture 11
  • Solutions to HW #5, lecture 13



    Notes





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