pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

Over the past several year the Smart Transportation Application & Research (STAR) Lab, at the University of Washington has been developing a technology called the Mobile Unit for Sensing Traffic (MUST). The MUST Sensor is a multisource traffic sensor, whose main function is to catch the Media Access Control (MAC) addresses of the mobile devices in the surrounding area of the sensor. MAC addresses of mobile devices can be used as a unique identifier of each traveler to record the traveler’s spatial-temporal movement characteristics so that traffic parameters can be extracted including travel time, traffic speed, traffic volume, etc. Beyond  motorized traffic data collection, this technology allows the deployer to capture the traffic information of non-motorized traffic by monitoring the mobile devices carried by pedestrian and bicyclist. By deploying the GPS module, MUST 2 can be installed in mobile object to collect data, like transit vehicle and probe vehicle. Video camera and environmental sensing module also integrated with MUST 2, which extend its capability and effectiveness for traffic sensing. MUST 2 is able to send data to remote server in real-time by several wireless communication protocols.

Recently STAR Lab researchers utilized PacTrans Technology Transfer Success Story funding to create media that demonstrates the many capabilities that were discussed above. A promotional video was created for this purpose. Further, this technology has been presented at the 2018 TRB Annual meeting, the 2018 ITS WA annual conference and the 2017 ITE WA Conference. It has now been deployed in several locations including SR-522 in Washington State, and has also been utilized as a data collection hub for STAR Lab smart road stickers.