RT-TRACS: DEVELOPMENT OF THE REAL-TIME CONTROL LOGIC

This paper provides an overview of the RT-TRACS (Real-Time Traffic Adaptive Control System) project in order to answer some of the frequently asked questions about this system. The RT-TRACS prototype will be developed and field evaluated for use in an ITS environment by 1997. This system offers many new features, most of them not available in the existing real-time control systems. One feature is its multi-level distributed architecture that offers the greatest potential for cost savings, while also meeting RT-TRACS functional and performance requirements under varying site and traffic conditions. RT-TRACS also has a built-in knowledge based system to predict existing traffic conditions and select the best control strategy from a list of candidate strategies. A case-based reasoning (CBR) system is being developed to facilitate the prediction and strategy selection process.