How mathematics can help to fight traffic jams?
Do you know this feeling, when it’s very hot and stuffy outside and you are stuck in a traffic jam? You are trying to come in time for a date, but you are extremely late. Ugh, again these traffic jams! You get angry. When you finally arrive, a girl has certainly slipped away. You know this feeling – traffic jams are there all the time .But at RUDN University there is a group of concerned students, who want to find a solution to this problem.
Many specialists are trying hard to solve the problem of road congestion in the context of limited traffic infrastructure. Such situations often hampers cargo deliveries, passengers miss their flights and meetings. Alexey Belyakov, several students of Engineering Academy and Askhat Ibragimovich Diveev, a professor of Cybernetic and Mechatronics Department of RUDN University, decided to develop a program for management of the traffic flow in a megalopolis.
«This problem cannot be solved by common means (for example, by road extension, building of expensive junctions or inclusion of reverse traffic), because road traffic infrastructure in cities has already formed. From my point of view, under such conditions the most effective way is to regulate the work of traffic lights», Alexey says.
For the development of the program students and the professor made a mathematical model for the management of the traffic flow. Due to this procedure, it might be possible at any time to assess the number of cars on each part of the road in the city. Then on the basis of this method they wrote software for the computer. The software is calledCTraf. At this stage the information on the traffic state, speed and congestion is collected manually. Project developers come to a place, register all indices by using special equipment. In the future all data will be obtained automatically through sensors and photo and video recording systems, established on the roads.
On the basis of data, maximum traffic capacity, limited number of transport between traffic lights and other data is analyzed. As a result, the computer program shows a numeral value (in seconds or minutes) of the ideal duration of traffic light at a crossroad. For example, if roads are clear, «green waves» can be formed. In morning rush hours traffic lights can work slowly in order to prevent traffic congestion on the main streets.
Students have tested this model on small road sections, comprising no more than 10 traffic lights. They tested it on the real crossroads near Moscow underground stations. As a result, they developed a method of combining small road nets into one big net. This helps to assess an optimum control regime easier. Also students and the professor created an evolutionary algorithm for the setting of the model, using observed data, obtained from data recorders.
Now project developers are working on software package. They also want to contact city’s administration and ministries in order to implement the program at the crossroads of the city.
There is a long list of lovely pets which make people happy every day – cats, dogs, hamsters, chinchillas, turtles, chameleons, fish and sometimes even crocodiles and tigers – and you can continue this list further. Unfortunately, sometimes our pet can get sick. If you are an owner of an animal or you were one some time ago, you definitely remember your anxiety when a little creature feels bad. And certainly you are ready to do anything so that your doggie wags its tail again and a kitten cheerfully chases a toy mouse!
It is possible to make fuel from peat and sawdust! Even environment-friendly. To make fuel yourself you’ll need an insulated vessel, a thermometer, a filter… But RUDN University’s student of the Faculty of Physical-Mathematical and Natural Sciences decided to study scientific methods of clean fuel generation which are applied in industry and improve this technology herself. The principal source of the generation of diesel fuel, petrol and hydrocarbons, such as propane and butane, is oil. Hydrocarbons are obtained by oil cracking – it is heated and then the vaporized hydrocarbons are condensed. Petrol and diesel fuel are obtained by mixing hydrocarbons containing different amount of carbon and hydrogen. Nevertheless, easily accessible oil reserves are getting exhausted and oil prices are high. For these reasons fuel producers often use poor-quality materials which contain sulfur in large quantities. It makes the product toxic and when it vaporizes it harms the environment. These oil resources are not suitable for clean diesel oil and hydrocarbons generation. That’s why the application of other resources containing carbon and hydrogen has become important. Such resources as natural gas, coal and biomass can replace oil.
One of the Wonders of the World, Hanging Gardens of Babylon – is it a myth or reality? We don’t know that for sure and, unfortunately, we won’t ever see them. But in Germany there is a small flower island where RUDN University students created their own unusual gardens and hundreds of tourists come to the island to look at them. RUDN University students were offered to take part in a competition in Landscape design at an annual exhibition “Seasonal gardens” on Mainau Island. The island is a surprising place – all the territory of 45 hectares is covered with parks and gardens. Every year Mainau receives more than a million guests.