Analyzing City Traffic Patterns with Raspberry Pi Sensors
This citizen science project will use 1,500 sensors distributed throughout Madrid, Dublin, Cardiff, Ljubljana, and Leuven.
Depending on where you live, as well as your occupation, traffic is a part — generally a negative part — of everyday life. In an effort to understand these traffic patterns, 1,500 Raspberry Pi-based traffic sensors are being set up in homes across Madrid, Dublin, Cardiff, Ljubljana, and Leuven in a project called Citizens Observing UrbaN Transport (WeCount).
These sensors will observe the speed and size of passing objects to determine whether they are pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles. This data can, according to Professor Edna Hayes out of the University of the West of England, Bristol, “be used in a number of initiatives relating to things like speed, noise, air pollution, safety and active travel.” Information is updated hourly, so while useful for study, it’s probably not the right system to check your morning commute.
More details on the project are available in this BBC article. Although it doesn't give specifics on the sensors, it does note that they are made by Raspberry Pi. One would guess this device is a Pi Camera running a computer vision algorithm, perhaps on a Pi Zero W. Software for the system has already been implemented in Belgium, so hopefully many of the normal bugs you’d expect with something new have been worked out. Professor Hayes mentions that they are “asking for people to volunteer to have sensors in their homes,” so if you have a view of the street, maybe that could even be you!
[h/t: Raspberry Pi]