Tracking of heavy vehicles for estimating heavy load distribution across the highway system and Weigh-In-Motion Calibration

Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) has been employed as a major technology to collect heavy vehicles’ data on the freeways. Because WIM is one of the most costly and sophisticated data collection system, how to effectively utilize the valuable WIM data, monitor WIM stations' performance, and identify out of calibration stations are especially important. In this project, we propose an innovative and yet practical approach to develop an Inductive Loop Signature-WIM based real-time heavy vehicle tracking system that combines the use of both WIM data and the inductive loop signature data. The integration of inductive loop signature technology offers a low-cost solution to monitor the performance of the WIM stations, identify out-of-calibration stations, and provide groundtruth truck movement data to be used for calibration. Therefore the development of the Inductive Loop Signature-WIM based Detection System will not only reduce the cost of WIM calibration, but also provide the ability to monitor system performance continuously. In this Phase I project, we will demonstrate the proof of concept of the proposed approach in the real world and investigate its potential applications, such as the estimation truck activities and loading distributions and the calibration of WIM stations.