IoT Intelligent Transportation Systems with Twilio Sync

[Editors Note : A use case demo by Gopinath Sheregar  CEO, Co-Founder @IoTracX | BD @radiostud.io ]

Internet of Things has been around for a few years now, and its novelty has already given way to practicality across various industries. Technologies such as GSM and more recently LPWAN have enabled us to connect device which are either on the move or accessible only remotely. And with GPS, it is quite easy to track vehicles as well. For managing emergency vehicles on the move, we can employ a set of these technologies to make a smart and intelligent transportation system.

That leads to our use case today. We want to build an ITS that can sense an approaching emergency vehicle at a traffic signal, and then direct the traffic signal to turn green. Once the vehicle crosses the intersection, the ITS redirects the traffic signal to roll back to its normal operation.

We are going to build a model ITS system which is capable of sensing emergency vehicles and controlling the approaching traffic lights. As this system will comprise both hardware and software components, let’s dive in to get a closer look at each of system components.

Hardware Components of The System

In a real-world application, the best way to track the location and direction of a moving vehicle is through a GPS device. We also have another device that can be attached to the traffic signal equipment to control the operation on the traffic lights. Both these devices need to be connected to the Internet.

However, to simplify the setup for our model ITS, the Raspberry Pi 3 can be used as traffic signal equipment.

Software for a Demo ITS

The GPS device component of the emergency vehicle is simulated in software for today’s demo. It will replicate the movement of the vehicle along a predefined route. It sends the GPS location along that route and gives an impression of the vehicle in motion by sending GPS data periodically.

Assuming that we have the traffic signals and emergency vehicles hooked up to the internet, how do we connect them in such a way that the traffic signal is aware of the approaching emergency vehicles location?

That’s where Twilio Sync comes in and plays the role of an orchestrator.

Twilio Sync is a cloud-based service that makes it super easy to share information between multiple devices connected to the internet. It is a serverless way of sharing your application state between multiple connected components. Think of it as a memoryless way of storing and syncing variables and state information between two application components connected to the internet, akin to the serverless way of deploying applications on the cloud.