Bounding Polygon Travel Time Estimation for Transportation Structures
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current methods for evaluating transportation structures, such as intersections, using location traces and virtual trip lines, inaccurately include travel times spent outside the structure, leading to flawed delay analysis due to the inclusion of non-transportation areas within the boundary definitions.
Innovation Solution
The method involves creating a bounding polygon that tightly encloses the transportation structure, specifying gates for legitimate entry and exit points, and computing travel times for probes within this polygon, ensuring only relevant travel times are accounted for, thereby excluding non-transportation areas and improving accuracy.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If virtual trip lines are used to define transportation structure boundaries, then travel time measurement is enabled, but non-transportation areas are incorrectly included in the boundary leading to inaccurate delay analysis
Solution Approach 1:
The boundary definition is segmented into multiple geometric components (bounding box, bounding polygon, inner boundary) that progressively refine the transportation structure boundary to exclude non-transportation areas while maintaining measurement capability
Solution Approach 2:
A bounding polygon is introduced as an intermediary geometric construct between the simple virtual trip lines and the complex transportation structure boundary, serving as a mediator that accurately captures the structure boundary while excluding extraneous areas
2Reliability
If fixed sensors are deployed to evaluate transportation structures, then performance evaluation is achieved, but deployment and maintenance costs are high
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of deploying physical sensors at transportation structures, the system uses virtual trip lines and bounding polygons as digital copies that replicate sensor functionality by detecting probe vehicle passages and computing travel times
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses existing probe vehicle location traces and onboard sensors to self-generate the data needed for transportation structure evaluation, eliminating the need for dedicated fixed sensors at evaluation points
Data Source
AI summary
A method, apparatus, computer program product, and device with various means are disclosed for determining the time it takes to a traverse a transportation structure by enclosing a representation of a transportation structure with a bounding polygon, specifying a plurality of gates which represent legitimate entry or exit points of the transportation structure as one or more edges of the bounding polygon, and computing the travel time for a probe traveling through the bounding polygon via the gates. Computing the probe's travel time comprises generating a location trace of movement of the probe, determining an entry and exit time, and calculating the difference between the exit time and the entry time. Determining the entry and exist time can be done by interpolation. An average of a set of computations can be used to get an average of the time it takes traverse the transportation structure.