Instantaneous Induction Loops Detectors

Instantiating within the Simulation#

An instantaneous induction loop is defined this way within an additional file like this:

<instantInductionLoop id="<ID>" lane="<LANE_ID>" pos="<POSITION_ON_LANE>" file="<OUTPUT_FILE>" [friendlyPos="x"]/>

The "id" is any string by which you can name the detector. The attributes "lane and "pos" describe on which lane and at which position on this lane the detector shall lay. The "file" attribute tells the simulation to which file the detector shall write his results into. The file will be generated, does not have to exist earlier and will be overwritten if existing without any warning. The folder the output file shall be generated in must exist.

The attributes:

Attribute Name Value Type Description
id id (string) The id of the detector
lane referenced lane id The id of the lane the detector shall be laid on. The lane must be a part of the network used.
pos float The position on the lane the detector shall be laid on in meters. The position must be a value between -1*lane's length and the lane's length. In the case of a negative value, the position will be computed backward from the lane's end (the position the vehicles drive towards).
file filename The path to the output file. The path may be relative. If output is to be discarded "NUL" or "/dev/null" can be given.
friendlyPos bool If set, no error will be reported if the detector is placed behind the lane. Instead, the detector will be placed 0.1 meters from the lane's end or at position 0.1, if the position was negative and larger than the lane's length after multiplication with -1.
vTypes string space separated list of vehicle type ids to consider, "" means all; default "".

Note

Instead of manually defining detectors in an xml file, they can also be defined visually with netedit.

Generated Output#

An instantaneous induction loop is writing a value to the output as soon as a vehicle was detected. This detector differs between different states:

  • "enter": a vehicle has entered the detector in this simulation step
  • "stay": a vehicle which entered the detector in a prior step is still on the detector
  • "leave": a vehicle has left the detector in this simulation step

The following values are reported in all cases:

Name Type Description
id id The id of the detector
time s The time the event occurred
state The event type, see above
vehID The id of the vehicle which is on the detector
speed m/s The speed of the vehicle in this time step
length m The length of the vehicle
type The type of the vehicle

If state is "enter", then the following value is generated additionally:

Name Type Description
gap s The time gap between the vehicle which left the detector before and the one which entered it now; please note that this value is generated only, if another vehicle has already left the detector.

If state is "leave" and the vehicle left the detector via longitudinal movement, then the following value is generated additionally:

Name Type Description
occupancy s The time the vehicle was on the detector.

If the vehicle leaves the detector because it arrived, changed lanes or teleported a leave event without occupancy is generated.

Visualisation#

instantaneous_loops.svg Figure: A scenario with induction loops

instantaneous_loop_closeup.svg Figure: A close-up view at an induction loop

Further Notes#

  • Instantaneous induct loops are not directly supported by TraCI. As Simulated induction loops can be accessed using TraCI allows a per-second value retrieval from plain induction loops, you can nonetheless monitor vehicle entering and leaving times using the "last step vehicle data" variable.

    Caution

    As the order of simulating lanes is not deterministic, it may happen that within a simulation step a vehicle enters a detector before the one which is already on the detector is moved. The leave/entry times are correctly computed - the leaving vehicle will have a lower time than the entering - but the order of reports is wrong. Also, it may happen that the "gap"/"occupancy" values are wrong.