Emergency Response Operating System
The modern world relies on time. Management of time governs our lives and decides our fates. When emergencies become the difference between life and death, the art of time management becomes even more critical. Most of the first responders work in this situation. The pressure stays on every second of every day, seven days a week, three-sixty-five days a year. There are no breaks. Somehow, as the world is progressing, this pressure keeps mounting. Increased vehicles on the road and our exponentially growing population pose an immense obstacle for the unsung heroes who dedicate their lives to saving ours.
As I travel on the Indian roads, I have often observed ambulances stuck at traffic lights. The countrymen of this wonderful country of ours are not heartless. I see the people trying their best to give the ambulance some space to jump ahead and proceed to its destination. Yet, even the most accommodating of individuals end up with their hands tied till the light turns green, thanks to the jam-packed roads. An immense amount of traffic on the roads makes it impossible for the civilians to create any sort of path for the ambulance until the light turns green. As a result, the ambulance wastes sixty to ninety precious seconds waiting at a traffic light that it is authorized to jump.
Emergency response vehicles, such as ambulances and fire trucks, cannot afford to waste time waiting at the traffic lights. Such services need a system that allows them to cross traffic lights safely, with no delay. A solution that comes to mind is an emergency response system that uses a mobile app, Google maps, and microchip-controlled traffic junctions. The android app shall allow the driver of an emergency to select a destination and Google maps shall find the shortest path to it. The mobile app would then identify all the traffic junctions that the highlighted route passes through. The emergency vehicle’s arrival time at each of these junctions would be monitored by the app. When the vehicle is within a certain distance from the junction or the arrival time to the junction reaches a certain value, the app would broadcast a signal to the junction. Upon receiving this signal, the micro-computer that controls the lights for that junction shall set the lights of the lane on which the ambulance is travelling to green and the rest to red. This way, by the time the emergency vehicle arrives at the traffic junction, the traffic halted there due to the light would have cleared and the emergency vehicle can proceed where it wants. Once the vehicle crosses the junction, the lights would start functioning normally.
A less advanced prototype of this project has been developed by me using the Radio Frequency (RF) technology and Bluetooth.
The prototype starts with the driver of the emergency vehicle selecting a starting location and a destination on an app (not featured). Next, the app communicates the same to the RF transmitter module (that resembles the setup that is to be installed inside the emergency vehicle) via Bluetooth. The data is then passed onto the Ardunio UNO board that is connected to the Bluetooth module. The data regarding the starting location and destination is the processed by the Arduino UNO and then an appropriate message passed to the RF transmitter by the UNO. This message is transmitted via the RF transmitter and is received by the RF receiver that is mounted on the junction. The received message is then passed onto the Arduino Mega 2560 board connected to the receiver. This message is the processed by the Arduino Mega board. Once the processing is complete, the appropriate light at the junction is set to green and the rest to red, clearing the traffic ahead and allowing the driver of the ambulance to proceed towards the desired destination without delay.
A system like this shall save the time that is spent by emergency services trying to squeeze through the heavy city traffic. It will also make for safer transportation of patients as now, instead of having to jump traffic lights, the emergency vehicles would change the traffic lights according to their needs.
