Smartphone software to predict traffic jams?
IBM is testing smartphone software designed to predict traffic jams and warn motorists before they even take to the roads. IBM said late Tuesday that its employees in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley areas of Northern California have been testing technology that “will ultimately help drivers around the world” avoid fouled traffic.
Those involved in the pilot project agree to have location-sensing capabilities in their smartphones automatically track where they drive and when, according to IBM Smarter Traveler program manager John Day. The information is fed through the Internet to computers that identify patterns such as commutes to and from work. Meanwhile, data collected from roadway censors commonly used for online traffic maps is analyzed to determine conditions that usually lead to trouble.
For example, congestion at a certain off-ramp or bridge entrance may consistently lead to traffic backing up in another area. The results are combined to form personalized predictions of when a motorist is apt to run into highway headaches. “We wanted to take advantage of analytic tools to provide predictive capabilities; to get correlations with minor slowdowns and major ones that happen after that,” Day told AFP. “So you can run a query at any point for a journey and predict 35 or 40 minutes in advance what it will look like, then couple that with a personal approach for the individual traveler.”
IBM researchers worked with California state highway authorities and a Mobile Millennium Team at the University of Berkeley, California, on the project. The smartphone application lets people receive customized alerts warning of probable traffic trouble before they set out on commutes or other routine drives. The service is powered by a “first-of-its-kind learning and predictive analytics tool” called the Traffic Prediction Tool (TPT) developed by IBM Research.
TPT continuously analyzes congestion data, commuter locations and expected travel start times throughout a metropolitan region that can affect commuters on highways, rail-lines and urban roads. “The idea is to learn a traveler’s habits, then run it on the predictive model to see what traffic they can expect,” Day said. “The objective was to make it much more personal and provide it to them just before they were about to leave.”
IBM researchers envision integrating real-time data from bus or train systems into the equation so the service could advise people when it would be smarter to divert to public transit. Privacy protections included obscuring start and end points of trips as well as letting people manage their travel data online. The pilot project has been going on for about five months.
Can’t wait for this invention to become available! Check out the photo of that heavy traffic on the New Delhi highway! I think that the person who originally came up with this concept is a woman from a town in India if I am not mistaken, but don’t quote me on that eventhough I am almost always right.
The Asians come up with most of the brilliant ideas on this planet. Americans need to step up to the plate. The bar has been raised to an entirely different playing field. You know that you have truly lived a meaningful life when you made a major positive impact on the lives of so many people. Nothing else measures in comparison. Most of us, including myself, are still toiling away, everyday to try and make our mark on society.
That said, IBM is one of the greatest American Companies responsible for making great things happen, employing the most disabled people and filing for the most patents for inventions. I only wish that more American Companies or Companies in general could emulate them!