Cepton, a leader in high-performance lidar solutions for the automotive and smart infrastructure markets, announced that its lidar technology has been used in studies in Texas and Utah to help improve traffic safety for all road users, in alignment with the national Vision Zero and Complete Streets initiatives.
Cepton’s Helius® Smart Lidar System, which combines lidar sensors with edge computing and intelligent perception software, has been deployed by researchers from the University of Texas Arlington (UTA) through the USDOT-funded National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) at two busy intersections in two Texas cities: one in Arlington, Texas, which connects two UTA campuses; the other in the neighborhood of a high school in Irving, Texas.
The deployments enabled two studies funded by NITC, with additional support from the cities of Arlington and Irving, Texas, the Oregon Department of Transportation, UTA and the University of Utah.
The first study uses Helius to analyze pedestrian behaviors and revealed that pedestrian behaviors often do not align with recommendations in pedestrian facility design guides, such as the AASHTO “Green Book.”
The second study focuses on the separation of left-turning vehicles from concurrent pedestrians crossings, utilizing an innovative dynamic flashing yellow arrow (D-FYA) system that generates signal operations based on real-time pedestrian analytics enabled by 3D lidar perception.
With proven effectiveness, the lidar-enabled D-FYA solution will be deployed in Salt Lake City, Utah in a project funded by the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT). UDOT is already working on the implementation of this solution to further evaluate lidar’s potential capabilities of increasing the safety and efficiency of traffic operations.
According to UDOT, the system will enable operators to monitor pedestrians’ walking speeds and “look at things like red light running and near misses for pedestrians and vehicles,” enabling detailed traffic data collection that traditional detectors are unable to provide. The system could enable UDOT to “tailor traffic signals to travelers’ needs, potentially adjusting signal timing in real time,” and has the potential to “integrate with vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) connected vehicle technology” to warn vehicles of potential hazards.
“Previous research has shown that cars may not look for pedestrians sufficiently on a flashing yellow arrow (FYA), as they search for a gap in traffic to make a left turn, which can be dangerous,” explains Dr. Taylor Li, lead researcher on the project and Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UTA. “To remove this risk, a traffic signal system can be programmed to turn off the FYA when a pedestrian walk button is pressed. It is not always efficient, however, as pedestrians tend to press all walk buttons available when they want to cross on a diagonal or change their decisions, and cars still have to wait out the rest of the programmed red time, when a pedestrian isn’t really crossing or crosses very quickly.
