CROSSROAD - Simple Traffic Animation

Max Schaefer - University of Applied Sciences (FH) Trier

under the supervision of Prof. Eugenio Oliveira

funded by SOCRATES Programme (European Union)

The Crossroad program is a simple program that displays two subsequent intersections in a window. Each intersection is surrounded by 4 traffic lights. While running the program the quantity of cars in the streets can be manipulated as well as the green time per direction. Every car can only drive straight forward. The program also includes an adaptive way to control the traffic lights in order to avoid traffic jams that block the intersections. This adaptive control mechanism can be enabled or disabled at each case for the intersections ahead and below. When starting the program cars are moving in the streets. The quantity of the cars can be provided per lane by using the appropriate buttons of the control panel. The settings of the adaptive mechanism can be modified at each time for the top intersection and the bottom intersection. The adaption of the green time can be watched by a progress bar at each case for the upper intersection and the lower intersection. Finally there is a kind of statistic available e.g. to compare adaptive and undaptive control mechanism. The statistic displays by bars the average time a car spends to enter the intersection at each time for the top side and for the bottom side intersection.

The program was build by using JDK1.1.6. It also uses the JFC1.1. Thus the Applet version requires a quite new browser that supports jdk1.1. The application needs a Java virtual machine to be executed. It is bundled with the JFC1.1 classes and the JDK1.1.6 classes.

You may give it a trial by testing the applet. But the applet version has some limitations.

there are less cars available because of performance
the progress bars to display the greentimes are disabled because they are JFC components
the progress bar in the statistic is disabled
the interface of the application uses the JFC and thus its appearance is more nice ...