A Comprehensive Review of PLC based Intelligent Traffic Light Control System

Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), one of the old and powerful technologies useful in all kinds of industrial processes for controlling, monitoring, automating, and performing the tasks. PLC's are the industrial computers that takes the inputs from the surrounding environments and produces the outputs based on the programs that runs the PLC. PLC is mainly composed of Sensors, Controllers, and Actuators. Then what makes the PLC so different, and unique? The answers lies with its processing capabilities. As the name implies Programmable, Logic, and Controllers. These three terms makes the PLC unique and different from other processors and controllers. In today's world, almost in all the industrial processes, PLC's are used for mainly controlling purposes. There are enormous benefits in it, processing capabilities in it, can process high level applications, used in almost all industries for variety of applications and needs. One application which I consider for my project is intelligent traffic light. The term intelligent makes us to think why it is called so. The reason is intelligent is the one who can tackle with the tasks, control the tasks, monitor the tasks, and self-configure the tasks. In my work, I am going to use PLC to make the traffic light with more intelligence capabilities. PLC forms the central core of my system. In my work, I will be using three different types of modes such as intelligent working mode, routine working mode, and night working mode. Traffic detection and clock controls are given as inputs to the PLC controller. The outputs are the two displays that are traffic light and countdown displays. The project is implemented using CodeSys simulation software where I will show the simulation results. The performance of my intelligent traffic light based on PLC is compared with the traditional PLC system.