Communication system for Intelligent Road Signs network

The way of providing the end user with an accurate data regarding the current road conditions is one of the very important components in the area of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). In such cases one of the possibilities is to display the adaptive content on a dedicated road sign. The most important issue in the process of building the trust between the road signalling infrastructure and the end user is the information significance and its value. The ongoing NCBiR project - InZnak - aims to introduce a new type of the road signalling subsystem which relies on intelligent road signs equipped with variety of sensors and adaptive led displays. Sensors feed the autonomous algorithms with data necessary to take decisions on how to react to current road conditions. The proposed system typically consists of a few road signs communicating with each other and exchanging measured data: weather conditions, road surface condition, traffic volume, avg. vehicles speed, detected road events, etc. On the basis of the information exchanged between road signs, each of them runs the autonomous algorithm to process that data and computes the current status of road section driving conditions. The InZnak project focuses on the problem of the traffic control using intelligent autonomous road signs. The process of the speed limit determination is often complicated and in many cases it is defined by numerous legal standards. In general, speed determination should take into account not only the technical aspect, but also social and legal aspects, which makes this process especially difficult. This paper presents the InZnak communication system architecture with the deployed prototype and its current status of integration.