The power of AI in improving efficiency and safety on our roads and highway
Some of our team recently attended the T-Tech 2024 - ITSNZ Annual Summit. It was a great opportunity to see how the transport industry is using technology to make our roads and highways both safer and more efficient, as well as a chance for us to talk to clients about how our team can assist.
UCL partnered with AMAG in late 2023 to bring their cutting edge AI technology to NZ to complement our existing delivery of tethered UAV product combined with AI to improve both efficiency and safety on the road network.
UCL has its roots founded in road safety, as does AMAG. One of the key reasons why we partnered with AMAG was their long history as both a company and a group of individuals in road safety. They are not some technology developers trying to find a problem to apply technology to, they are passionate road safety experts who have dedicated the best part of 15 years to solve issues of road safety by developing technology to do so.
There are a lot of challenges for clients who are wanting to utilise technology to assist them in delivering better outcomes for the users. Among these are working through all the options out there in terms of technology, all while trying to deliver more for less in the current funding environment.
The three areas that our team provide products utilising AI for are:
We believe it is really important that the right tools are used for the right job. Sometimes we may even utilise good old tube counts as they may be the most cost effective product to gather basic traffic counts. Each of our AI products meet different needs and for different price points.
It is also important note that having been delivering our UAV product for nearly 5 years that we understand that nothing is as simple as uploading a video and hitting a button to get a magical answer, although the AMAG products are much closer to doing this. Understanding the correct perspective to fly the UAV or position the camera, ensuring you calibrate the software are all key steps. Having skilled traffic and safety engineers involved in the process and assisting clients to address issues identified are all part of our offering.
Let's talk you through each of our products in more detail.
SMART Safety Product
Meet our Safe Mobility Alert Real Time (SMART) Digital Platform to support Vision Zero and Safe Systems. Using video analytics, AI, deep learning, and advanced econometrics and providing predictive analytics to boost road safety. For this product we install the camera for 1 - 2 weeks.
The main use of this product is to assess sites for safety issues via the highly developed critical conflicts / near miss AI. Critical conflicts are reliable predictors of future crashes and can be measured accurately with robust analytics.
It also has the benefit of counting and classifying 12 classes of road users (including differentiating between adults and children and bikes and eScooters), speeds and many more data sets.
This is the ultimate tool for assessing safety issues at sites and also for measuring the sites post the construction of solutions to test that they are working and measure the real reduction in crashes and near misses.
As the client you get access to the dashboard which provides a safety report and allows you to interrogate the data by road user type, times of day, near miss type and more.
In a climate where funding is constrained the SMART Safety product allows you to narrow in on the critical issues at sites and then measure the performance of the solutions implemented within weeks of them being constructed rather than wait for a reduction in crash rates.
SMART Operations
SMART Operations is a real-time traffic monitoring and analysis into traffic management providing a core piece of the Safe Systems approach. Give your operations team the resources they need to effectively monitor and control road safety and traffic. SMART Operations monitors your network around the clock. Then, when a significant event happens, the relevant member of your team will receive an alert so they can act. This tool gives your team a comprehensive overview of the network, allowing you to act and rectify on-road conflicts as they happen.
The true beauty of this product over others in the market is that we can typically utilise your existing CCTV infrastructure by simply installing an Edge device on them to provide on site and instant application of the AI. No need to buy expensive or proprietary cameras.
Imagine the power this brings to your traffic operating centre. Instead of having a handful of people watching monitors for part of the day you can have 24/7 coverage of all the cameras connected the the SMART Operations platform with real time alerts being sent to those best to respond. Each near miss incident is captured as a video snippet for your team to review.
The ability to leverage of your existing CCTV infrastructure is a key strength of the SMART Operations product.
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A further strength of the SMART Operations product is the ability to integrate with signal controllers. This allows virtual detection zones to be established (say good bye to those high maintenance loops) to make your network more efficient as well as safer. It can adjust the phasing or timing based on the speed or type of users that it is detecting.
Imagine the potential of being able to be able to quickly and easily change detection zones for special events or during roading maintenance and renewal projects.
Tethered UAV
Urban Connection has been utilising UAV's to undertake traffic and safety surveys for the past 5 years. We quickly realised their potential, but also their limitations with flight times typically being 25 - 30mins. As a result of this we investigated options to extend the flying time.
As a result of this we introduced what we believe to be the 1st, and only, tethered UAV in New Zealand to undertake transportation study related work. The UAV is powered via a fibre optic cable and a generator on the ground. This means we the UAV can fly for as long as generator is fuelled. We typically fly 2 - 6 hours depending on the type of data required. A 2 hour flight is ideal for determining the peak hour traffic and 6 hours is ideal for observing behaviours on a low to moderate volume rural highway curve.
It is ideal for situations where you do not need a weeks worth of data (establishing peaks and traffic movements to calibrate traffic models) or where you need to capture queuing over a wide footprint or the interaction of vehicles between 2 intersections where fixed cameras may have restrictions in what they can capture.
This system allows for excellent data integrity with no gaps in the traffic surveys. The UAV is typically not even noticed by the road users, therefore they behave as they normally would, unaware that the survey is being undertaken.
The system not only allows for uninterrupted data, it also allows for easy capture of complex intersections and their traffic movements. An example of this was a 5 leg dual lane roundabout which we surveyed where the client wanted to understand entry and exit lanes of vehicles but also any lane changes within the circulating lanes.
Through AI we are able to generate high accuracy movement counts, speed data and heat maps and also observe unusual or unsafe behaviours. Nearly every survey captures something unusual or that a client is unaware of occurring at a site.
Summary
As with many tools, no one tool fits all situations. Our team recognise this and take this into consideration when scoping projects.
The length of survey requirements can also be variable. While some may say you need a years worth of data to understand near miss or critical conflicts we know that 1 - 2 weeks of data is typically representative of what is occurring.
We have recently been looking at a prospective project where we believe that the mix of the SMART Safety, tethered UAV and tube counters will provide the appropriate data in the most cost effective manner.
Touch base with one of our team to understand how we can help you.