One of the USA’s leading providers of traffic signal control technology, Trafficware, and SWIM.AI, a Silicon Valley edge-intelligence software developer, have launched TidalWave, a live streaming traffic information service powered by machine-learning and edge computing.
The TidalWave service is now available across the USA, and is the industry’s latest advancement based on the original work developed in Silicon Valley to provide the City of Palo Alto with the first open source traffic data used in connected vehicle applications.
The partnership between 40-year ITS industry veteran Trafficware and SWIM transforms the accuracy and resolution of traffic information so communities can deliver streaming traffic data with sub-second accuracy using edge computing, while also packaged in a more affordable cloud service with low overheads and no impact to city infrastructure.
The majority of current routing and logistics applications rely on historical cellular GPS data to measure roadway congestion and estimate travel times. In order to determine traffic congestion on arterial corridors, the applications assume that all cell phones are located in moving vehicles and reflect current conditions. The speed and accuracy at which the data is collected, analyzed and made available is slow and often does not reflect the actual experience of drivers.
TidalWave performs the traffic and signal analysis either at a city’s advanced traffic management system (ATMS) or on controllers at street level and generates highly accurate real-time information. The efficiency of the edge solution means that data volumes are reduced by a factor of over 100 and can provide hardware savings of up to 80% compared to traditional solutions.
The service is a simple software addition to existing city infrastructure and subscribers to the Tidalwave service receive traffic information from a real-time API with still no cost for the service to the city.
“TidalWave uses a disruptive approach based on edge learning and analytics,” explained Rusty Cumpston, CEO of SWIM. “TidalWave analyzes, learns and predicts as data is created, at the edge, on existing hardware using a powerful edge compute/data fabric. It delivers precise, granular traffic data at a resolution of hundreds of milliseconds, at a small fraction of the cost of central cloud-hosted learning and prediction.”
Joe Custer, CFO of Trafficware, added, “TidalWave was designed using the first of its kind, ‘intelligent edge’ architecture for use by the connected vehicle, smart cities, and Internet of Things (IoT) markets, and will lead us and the ITS market into the next transformative era of technology over the next decade.”
