Development of a GPS-based highway toll collection system

Abstract

The necessity for vehicles to stop or slow down for toll fee payment results in traffic congestion and reduces fuel efficiency. Hence, a system that enables road users to pay the toll fees without stopping or slowing down was proposed and developed. Hardware and software designs were carried out to develop a Global Positioning System (GPS)-based highway toll collection system. This system was developed using a Raspberry Pi 2 microcontroller. Different modules such as GPS module, Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) module, speaker, wireless Wi-Fi router modem and wireless Wi-Fi adapter were incorporated and integrated with the microcontroller to perform a few specific functions. In general, the system utilized GPS coordinates to detect whether a vehicle passed through predefined locations in the database and the travel details were recorded. The Raspberry Pi 2 microcontroller was configured as a personal cloud server to allow online access of travel logs. This developed system presents a different approach for highway toll collection which eliminates travel delays and construction of expensive gantries or toll booths.