The traffic and variety of Personal Mobility Vehicles (PMVs) is growing in urban environments. Their planning and law enforcement require a better understanding of the use of PMVs. This invention improves the current magnetic loop detectors used for motorised vehicles and provides tools for remote analysis of PMV traffic.
The system and method extract valuable PMV monitoring information: vehicle type, speed and length, direction of traffic and traffic density in the target area. The design has been verified and validated in the laboratory with prototypes and measurements with several PMVs.
Applications
The system and method of this invention are designed and developed for PMV in urban environments and can be installed on streets and roads with PMV traffic, either with reserved or shared lanes. The information parameters obtained with this invention include:
- PMV class and typology
- Speed and length of the vehicle passing through the loop
- Direction of traffic
- PMV traffic density in the area
Monitoring these parameters allows for better enforcement and properly planning of streets/roads/lanes under construction or redevelopment.
Technology Overview
The essential technologies of this invention are magnetic loops and electronic circuits applied to vehicle detection. These technologies are based on motorised vehicle traffic detectors (cars, motorbikes, buses, trucks) used for parameters such as presence, speed, direction of traffic and type of vehicles, but not yet for PMV.
Current detector solutions are single, double or dual loop, with a typical size of 1 or 2 metres and a resonant working frequency of 100-200 kHz. When applied to PMV, these current solutions only detect the presence, unlike this invention which also motorises.
The invention has the following characteristics:
– Double loop loop with a size of less than 0.5 metres.
– Resonant working frequency of 400-800 kHz
The design of the system is implemented with five functional blocks:
1) Double magnetic loop
2) Oscillator circuit
3) PLL Phase Locked Loop circuit
4) Conditioner circuit
5) Signal processor circuit
The development of this invention with these blocks has been designed and optimised for PMV.
The functional flow has the following steps: (a) vehicle presence detection, (b) vehicle magnetic profile, (c) induced electrical voltage, (d) voltage derivative, and (e) calculation of maxima and minima. With these steps, a rich set of parameters is obtained.
