The Green Light SONATA: Foundations for Musical Agents Controlling Traffic Signals

The goal of this research is to improve signal operation and reduce delay through an innovative transdisciplinary integration of traffic signal control and music theories. The main hypothesis in this research is that “the underlying sense that musicians exhibit during improvisation can be utilized to better synchronize signal control with internal traffic rhythm.” In this work, we developed and used a SONATA interface to control a simulated traffic signal. It was found that two of the three musicians in this study have outperformed the Webster's optimal control (by 22.3% and 17.6%). It was also found that all three musicians controlled the traffic signal better when they were not looking at the simulation (i.e., using only auditory sensing).