Research Article The Use of Adaptive Traffic Signal Systems Based on Floating Car Data Vittorio Astarita, Vincenzo Pasquale Giofrè, Giuseppe Guido, and Alessandro Vitale Department of Civil Engineering, University of Calabria, Via P. Bucci Cubo 46B, 87036 Rende, Italy Correspondence should be addressed to Vittorio Astarita; vittorio.astarita@unical.it Received 13 February 2017; Accepted 11 April 2017; Published 11 May 2017 Academic Editor: Paolo Barsocchi Copyright © 2017 Vittorio Astarita et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Tis paper presents a simple concept which has not been, up to now, thoroughly explored in scientifc research: the use of information coming from the network of Internet connected mobile devices (on vehicles) to regulate trafc light systems. Tree large-scale changes are going to shape the future of transportation and could lead to the regulation of trafc signal system based on foating car data (FCD): (i) the implementation of Internet connected cars with global navigation satellite (GNSS) system receivers and the autonomous car revolution; (ii) the spreading of mobile cooperative Web 2.0 and the extension to connected vehicles; (iii) an increasing need for sustainability of transportation in terms of energy efciency, trafc safety, and environmental issues. Up to now, the concept of foating car data (FCD) has only been extensively used to obtain trafc information and estimate trafc parameters. Trafc lights regulation based on FCD technology has not been fully researched since the implementation requires new ideas and algorithms. Tis paper intends to provide a seminal insight into the important issue of adaptive trafc light based on FCD by presenting ideas that can be useful to researchers and engineers in the long-term task of developing new algorithms and systems that may revolutionize the way trafc lights are regulated. 1. Introduction, State of Art, and Contribution 1.1. Introduction. In this paper, we introduce the use of FCD to regulate trafc lights. It must be noted that the approach of this paper goes in a diferent direction from many recent research papers in the adaptive trafc signal sector. Consensus is established on the fact that new connectivity technologies with Vehicle-to-Infrastructure, infrastructure to vehicle, and vehicle-to-vehicle communications will pave the way for new adaptive trafc signal systems. Tere is no agreement on how this will happen and there are many diferent proposals tested in simulation. Originally, trafc adaptive systems were based on the tra- ditional idea of sensors that can count vehicles approaching intersections. Recent developments of this kind of idea have introduced wireless sensors that can be placed easily, where necessary, further extending this concept. A recent example is in Tubaishat et al. [1] where adaptive trafc light control is obtained with a network of wireless sensors deployed on the entering/exiting lanes of the intersections. Instead, the idea of this paper is to use information com- ing from the vehicles that would localize themselves through GNSS (or other terrestrial localization radio systems) and then communicate positions and speeds to a central control unit. Moreover, another recent concept has been discussed in a new stream of literature where recent works have been centered on using Advisory Speed Limit (ASL) control strategies. An example is Stevanovic et al. [2] or in Ubiergo and Jin [3] where Vehicle-to-Infrastructure communication is the base underlying the application of an ASL strategy with the efect of smoothing vehicle trajectories and reducing total travel time. ASL technology is very promising given the new connec- tivity technologies that will be introduced in newly produced cars. It is the opinion of the authors that even though ASL systems are useful there is more collective advantage to proceed mainly by regulating trafc lights according to trafc Hindawi Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Volume 2017, Article ID 4617451, 13 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/4617451