Question 1:

a)
i - Traffic light controller

ii - The aims of this project are:

• organizing the roadway

• reduce cars traffic
• control traffic light through road sensors
• control car movements through traffic light system
• reduce dangers and car accidents
• Detect the violated cars that pass the red light.

And we intend to deliver a program that controls the traffic lights.

b)

Every day we hear in Car traffics even in most modern cities in all over the
world, and it becomes a severe and global problem. People need stop signs
and traffic lights to slow down drivers from going to fast. If there were no
traffic lights or stop signs, people’s lives would be in danger from divers
going quickly. The purpose of our project is to design and implement a
traffic light controller for a road crossing that has two roads (north-south,
east-west), and the lights turn on and off according to the counters that
represent sensors found on the roads . The controller is constructed from a
finite state machine used to control the actual operation of the Traffic lights.
(“See figure 1”).

Traffic lights for vehicals normally have three main lights: a red light that
means 'stop', and a green light that means 'go', and the yellow light that the
car will prepare itself to go.

In order to achieve our aims: Below is the basic traffic simulation model
used in this project. While it is a simple model, the simulation has some
interesting and complex properties. A high-level listing of the properties and
limitations of this model is as follows:

• Traffic lights are not dependent on the number of vehicles on their

incoming streets.
• Cars are driven by responsible drivers who never speed past a yellow
light.
• A car maintains a small distance between it and the car in front of it.
• It is possible for cars to "collide" if they are going in perpendicular
directions and meet in an intersection.
• The speed of a car fluctuates by a small random amount to create
"clumping" effects.
• The light starts initially in the red state and remains red until a car
runs over the road sensor.
• When the sensor is triggered , it resets the counter and the counter
begins counting the crossing cars when its reach a specific limit it
sends an order to traffic light to switch order . After 10 seconds, it
goes to GREEN and waits 60 seconds to allow the cars to pass. After
2 minutes, the light goes to Yellow. After 10 more seconds, the car
 goes back to RED and begins again waiting for the road sensor to
trigger. ( this process is shown by a state machine diagram)
• Note that except for the road sensor, all state transitions are triggered
by the timer.

Figure 1

• There are 5 buttons to control the program, start button, Reset button,
Stop button, Exit button, and AMBULANCE button.
• Start button: will run the program.
• Reset button: will restart the program.
• Stop button: will stop the program.
• Exit button: will quit the program.
• Clicking the AMBULANCE button will place an ambulance on the
street grid that will follow a randomly determined path till it leaves
the grid.
• When no ambulances are on the streets adjacent to a traffic light, it
operates normally.
• On a street, cars will pull over to the side if an ambulance is within a
certain radius of the car and if there is a chance the car could be in the
way of the ambulance. This pulling over can be comical to watch at
times.
• If ambulances are approaching a light from both a north-south AND
east-west direction, there is nothing the traffic light can do to promote
easy passing. All lights will thereby be red.
 • On the same street, ambulances will space themselves a small distance
from each other.
• The speed of an ambulance varies with a slight random effect, but the
majority of the ambulance's speed depends on the number of cars in
front of it on the street it is on. The more cars the ambulance driver
sees ahead, the slower he/she will pass them.

For this purpose, we will use VB.net and may be we will use other
programs to implement our aims.

Word count= 665 word.

c)

First: fixed dates and deadlines with estimation of total time allocated.

Event Date/Cutoff Date Allocated time

TMA 01 10/11/2008 40 Hours
TMA 02 38 Hours
TMA 03 40 Hours
Report Submission 60 Hours
TMA 04 16 Hours
Tutorial Every Other Tuesday 1:30 Hours Per
At 10 A.M. Tutorial
Group Meeting Every Monday 27 Hours Per Week
,Tuesday, Wednesday
, Thursday from 9 till
4 P.M.

Planned Activities for the next months:

Month Planned Activities

1 Read the T471 Booklets.
Identify requirements and assignments for this project
Group formulation.
Decide on an Idea; begin researches on net in our project
ides.
2 Search and Learn tutorials about visual basic.net and c++
and m301 course materials.
Discuss the idea of the software with potential users.
Submit TMA 01.

3 Collect all required data about our program

Start Producing UML Diagrams.
Improving the proposal based on the tutor's feedback of
TMA01.
Make the suitable changes that adapt with tmao2.
Submit TMA 02.

4 Continuing UML Diagrams.

Ensuring Familiarity with VB.net and writing scripts.
Getting back on Track of anything has not yet been
completed.

5 Starting the implementation phase.

Producing the first draft of the report.
Submit TMA 03.

6 Implementation continues.
Writing the Draft continues.

7 Review on the overall progress and taking crucial decisions

for the priority of uncompleted activities.
Finalizing the report.

8 Finalizing the implementation.

Revising the report.
Submit final repot.

9 Submit TMA 04.

d) i)
We prepared for our literature by start searching on the internet, books,
magazines that help us on how to evaluate and improve our literature plan.
We have seen that some further research has to be done on coordinating the
lights. A mechanism for this is not yet designed and should be done as next.
And the most significant thing we learned was " The four stages in a
literature search that are:

1. identifying and locating relevant materials;

2. Evaluating their contents if it’s useful to enhance our project
idea.
3. abstracting their significant content;
4. Structuring the content and relating it to our project.

We have some available resources among them articles. First resource is

the AOU's library that may contain useful information. Second, the hints
and documents uploaded by our tutor. And the w3c, also we refer to some
friends that gave us some information about traffic lights.

Word count= 150 words

ii) Resources
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find any direct document or article
on the World Wide Web about the traffic light controller
1. Title of the subject from book (Simulation of modern Traffic Lights
Control Systems using the open source Traffic Simulation SUMO) D.
Krajzewicz, G. Hertkorn, C. Rössel, and P. Wagner.
2002. "SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility); An
open-Source Traffic Simulation" Proceedings of the 4th
Middle East Symposium on Simulation and Modeling
(MESM2002), Edited by: A. ~Al-Akaidi, pp. 183 - 187,
SCS European Publishing House, ISBN 90-77039-09-0

2. Traffic-Light Controller, Dr. Eric M. Schwartz, 4-Jul-08, University of

Florida EEL 3701, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
http://www.mil.ufl.edu/3701/labs/lab7_u08_traffic_controller.pdf

3.
Source Expert Systems with Applications: An
International Journal archive
Volume 34 , Issue 4 (May 2008) table of
contents
 Pages 2370-2381
Year of Publication: 2008
ISSN:0957-4174
Author Department of Information
W.
Wen
Management, LungHwa University of
Science and Technology, Taiwan, ROC
Publisher Pergamon Press, Inc. Tarrytown, NY, USA
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1342594

iii) Summery of the first resource (Simulation of modern Traffic

Lights Control Systems using the open source Traffic Simulation
SUMO )

The project “OIS” (optical information systems) new traffic control

mechanisms had to be invented and tested. One of the most important topics
was to optimize the flow over a junction using information from the OIS
sensors which can not be measured using normal sensors such as induct
loops. This publication describes the algorithm itself and how it was
embedded within the simulation. Furthermore, results are given. The traffic
light control was implemented by extending SUMO’s representation of
normal traffic lights logics (done using derivation in C++). Within a project
which has been done in a co-operation with universities and a number of
companies from Berlin, new optical sensors have been developed .Using
digital cameras to observe traffic and gain real information, including the
length of jams on a street or trajectories of vehicles, another goal of the
project was to invent mechanisms which use such information for traffic
optimization.

Word count = 149

We choose this document because it helps us in understanding the logic

of traffic light control algorithm and its implementation, moreover, how
to implement sensors.

e)
 For this project, we don’t need any complicated software or hardware or
technologies. . Thus we will be using the macromedia flash. Yet, we need
a VB.net environment in addition to explanation of the VB.net syntax. So
we will use some VB.net tutorials available on the net and may be java
that was given to us with the M301 booklet.

Question 2

a) So far, we have achieved all what is required for the first month. We
read the t471 booklets, and identified the requirements and deadlines for
this project. Also, we formed our group and decide an Idea; begin
researches on net in our project idea. And we selected the topic then we
agreed upon a time table. Also, we finished reviewing the material of
M301 and began reading about visual basic. Finally we are about to
submit the TMA 01 in few hours.

b) the resources that we used so far in developing our proposal are

internet ( world wide web ), books , magazines… and you can refer to
question 1 part d (ii) to see our references .
Deciding on a project took much more than it was expected. Generally, it
was successful search since we were able to decide on an idea without
hesitation. Also, we made effective use of our tutor's feedback about the
ideas. We can improve our skills by making having much more utilization
for the available resources especially form the course's CD-Rom.

c) Since deciding an idea took much time because we have many ideas
that we think they were good, but our tutor refused them and gave us more
advanced ideas that is suitable for an IT student. So we decide to choose
Traffic light controller to be our project.
It's very good that our time table is flexible and recognizes some time if
unexpected things happen. So we moved this action to the third month and
we emphasized that this action should be completed in quick time and with
good quality. It is good that this happened in early stage so that we learned
to be more specific when trying to estimate time for tasks and we were
confident that the time table is flexible.

d)

By the time to submit TMA 02 we will try to achieve some targets:

• Make use of the tutor feedback on TMA01 this is the first priority.
• Correct the error we made when we didn’t complete required task.
• Make sure that we are still familiar with UML notations and refresh
our knowledge about them.
• Develop our literature searching ability In reading sections of the CD-
ROM and reviewing some materials of previous courses
• Promote our ability to evaluate our work and think critically so that
we can produce a better work.

Word count = 399 words