Design and construction of an Automated vehicle speed control system.

Abstract

Road transport is the most convenient and most used form of transport in Uganda. This makes its safety or lack-of a vital issue to address. This report is a documentation of the analysis of one the factors that contribute to road traffic safety particularly vehicle speed control. The report shows a brief summary of the current speed control methods in Uganda; the use of road signs indicating speed limits, the use speed cameras and radar guns manned by traffic officers. It also highlights the inefficiencies in the existing methods of vehicle speed control in Uganda that include; the officer to vehicle ratio, inability of the traffic officers to be stationed on the road throughout all the hours of the day (24/7) and the failure of vehicle operators to adhere to the speed limits. This project seeks to find a solution to the inefficiencies by the design and implementation of an automatic vehicle speed control system. The system is based on cooperating systems between an electronic unit on the road and one in the vehicles. The implementation of the project uses radio frequency communication between the electronic unit on the road and the one in the vehicles, CAN bus communication between the units in the vehicle. The system uses Atmega microchips for logic control. The vehicle speed control concept is modelled on the modulation of the angle of the butterfly valve of the electronic throttle control body. The report details the implementation of the system prototype and analysis of the results obtained using simulated speed limits. The results indicate proper functionality of the prototype in accordance with the set objectives. The report also provides a recommendation for the government of Uganda to adopt the project idea as a solution to the vehicle speed control inefficiencies in Uganda.