Towards Intelligent Traffic Signaling in Dhaka City Based on Vehicle Detection and Congestion Optimization

The vehicular density in urbanizing cities of developing countries such as Dhaka, Bangladesh result in a lot of traffic congestion, causing poor on-road experiences. Traffic signaling is a key component in effective traffic management for such situations, but the advancements in intelligent traffic signaling have been exclusive to developed countries with structured traffic. The non-lane-based, heterogeneous traffic of Dhaka City requires a contextual approach. This study focuses on the development of an intelligent traffic signaling system feasible in the context of developing countries such as Bangladesh. We propose a pipeline leveraging Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) feeds, a low resources system Raspberry Pi 4B processing, and a state of the art YOLO-based object detection model trained on the Non-lane-based and Heterogeneous Traffic (NHT-1071) dataset to detect and classify heterogeneous traffic. A multi-objective optimization algorithm, NSGA-II, then generates optimized signal timings, minimizing waiting time while maximizing vehicle throughput. We test our implementation in a five-road intersection at Palashi, Dhaka, demonstrating the potential to significantly improve traffic management in similar situations. The developed testbed paves the way for more contextual and effective Intelligent Traffic Signaling (ITS) solutions for developing areas with complicated traffic dynamics such as Dhaka City.