| Technology Profile
21-24 APR 2020 AMSTERDAM
PTV Stand: 08.301
and interact in the same
simulation, without being
in the same physical room.
This PTV and Unity cosimulation
carries enormous
potential for planners,
especially of infrastructure
where simultaneous work on
traffic or pedestrian situations
is often needed.
Another major challenge
for planners using VR is how
to ‘walk’ through large
distances while being in a
limited physical space. For
example, when a planner needs
to use a simulator while
working on a 2km long road
section, but the office he or she
is working from is only 20m
long. The planner will most
likely hit the wall very soon!
Developers faced this
challenge head on, integrating
the power of PTV Vissim, Unity,
and a feature nicknamed
‘Motion Compression’ from the
ISAS Institute at the Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology (KIT).
It allows the user to experience
traffic and pedestrian
simulations of large
environments, by walking
in circles in a restricted
space – instead of walking
in straight lines.
Above: Apps for
pedestrians can
improve safety
Left: Drivers can
be made aware of
the time before a
signal turns red
Far Left: Trajectory
of autonomous
cars can be passed
on to other drivers
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January/February 2020 Traffic Technology International
www.TrafficTechnologyToday.com
067
Having successful
communication between traffic
lights and vehicles can give
drivers the peace-of-mind that
the traffic light will stay green
until they complete the crossing,
not worrying they will have to
suddenly brake. This can also
affect speed controls: braking
or accelerating will become
smoother, improving traffic
flow, increasing road safety
and lowering gas emissions
from heavy acceleration.
Ghost Cars
Autonomous vehicles are
predicted to enter mass service
over the next decade. For a
significant initial period of time,
which in turn displays them
through the augmented reality
windshield as ‘ghost cars’ to the
human drivers in the proximity.
Shared Simulator
Planners increasingly rely on
virtual reality simulators,
allowing them to be present in
all the environments they work
on. In the real world, however, it
is a struggle for planners to
work together on the same
virtual scenario when they are
not located in the same room.
To tackle this challenge, PTV
integrated a walking simulator
with Vissim and Unity software.
The ‘telepresence’ feature
enables multiple users to work
however, they will share
the roads with cars driven by
humans. One of the greatest
challenges associated with this
is safety.
Using PTV Vissim software,
developers integrated a
prediction model that visualizes
the positions of nearby vehicles
1-5 seconds into the future. With
this feature, autonomous
vehicles send their path
intentions to the surrounding
vehicles, allowing the latter
to visualize it and give human
drivers more certainty.
This prediction model
is integrated into PTV Vissim,
and the autonomous vehicles’
positions are sent to Unity,
PTV Group
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