Application of genetic algorithm to travel time measurement using vehicle data provided from ultrasonic vehicle detectors

Information on travel time is useful in improving traffic efficiency, such as reducing traffic congestion effectively. Travel time is computed from the passage time of vehicles observed at both the origin (upstream) and destination (downstream) points. For this purpose, we are studying a vehicle identification method using vehicle height data obtained from ultrasonic vehicle detectors. However, matching methods using only the vehicle height suffer from poor identification accuracy because many similar vehicles exist on the road. Therefore, we propose a method based on matching vehicle sequences (two or more vehicles). In addition, we develop this method using a Genetic Algorithm based on traffic characteristics. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 92(8): 43–52, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecj.10038