# Smart Pedestrian Crossing Management at Traffic Light Junctions through a Fuzzy-Based Approach
## 1 Introduction
The approach introduced by the authors aims to recognize crosswalks and is based on the road marking material and the pattern produced by the reflection of the laser beam from the road surface. The obtained results prove a satisfying performance for real-time application since the average processing time is relatively low for the crosswalk marking detection. The authors of [25] present a robust method for crosswalk detection and location, based on Maximally-Stable Extremal Regions (MSER) and extended Random Sample Consensus (ERANSAC), in traffic surveillance scenes. Compared to several existing detection techniques, the proposed method can efficiently derive crosswalk areas under the various illumination conditions. In this way, it is possible to bypass the selection of thresholds according to the current environmental situation, and as a consequence, the system flexibility and robustness are significantly increased. On the contrary, other authors have concentrated on signalized crosswalks. For instance, an algorithm for the detection of traffic lights and crosswalks, which globally compose a framework, is proposed in [26]. The solution introduced by the authors is developed to run also in embedded devices with small computational resources in real time. The framework is based on image detection, and the achieved results show that the accuracy of the algorithms is relatively high, although inaccurate results can easily be produced based on the quality of the detected images. The authors of [27] present a high-resolution data system able to gather the location, speed and turn movement of each vehicle as it enters an intersection, together with the signal phase and pedestrian and bicycle movements. The proposed system is based on video monitoring. The authors highlight that the use of a high-resolution data system can be a valuable support for intersection performance and for improving mobility and safety. However, it is necessary to point out that their solution requires powerful hardware and quite high computational performance. A new pedestrian twice crossing pattern, capable of realigning the vehicle signal sequence, is introduced in [28] with the aim to fully employ the temporal-spatial resource of a road intersection, helping thus pedestrians' crossing, providing them more time. The obtained results, regarding the average travel time, average delay and intersection capacity, of the road junctions that apply different signal sequences and pedestrian crossing patterns show promising performance compared to other solutions. This paper introduces a fuzzy logic-based solution for coping with the dynamic management of traffic lights' phases in signalized pedestrian crossings. In the smart solution introduced in this paper, the traffic light is dynamically regulated, by a Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC). In fact, the employment of rule-based FLCs helps the development of multi-criteria control procedures. Fuzzy logic is capable of performing real-time decisions, even with incomplete knowledge. More in detail, in recent years, various fuzzy-based strategies have been proposed to enhance the administration of traffic light junctions [29; 30; 31]. Since fuzzy logic schemes can naturally handle the linguistic rules, they are mainly suitable in different contexts, such as the dynamic management of traffic lights. Besides, fuzzy systems can be employed by mixing different parameters and rules, which may provide an optimal result. For instance, the use of smart setting and tuning techniques for FLCs can improve several ITS-based solutions for smart cities. As a consequence, the FLCs, based on linguistic rules instead of rigid reasoning, can be the appropriate choice to represent a mechanism for the dynamic control of traffic light phases in pedestrian crossings. The proposed fuzzy-based solution provides the possibility to adjust the phases of the traffic light taking into account the time of the day and the number of pedestrians about to cross the road.