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Volkswagen software for smart cities Artificial intelligence improves flow of traffic

Volkswagen software for smart cities - Artificial intelligence improves flow of traffic
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A pilot project for intelligent urban planning: in Carmel, Indiana, Volkswagen is analysing mobility data to understand the flow of traffic. The automotive manufacturer is using its own Computer Vision software from the production department for this project.

Major urbanisation trend: more than four billion people are currently living in urban areas – which is more than half of the global population. Counteracting the densification requires intelligent urban planning. “In today’s world, software is the only way to achieve this,” explains Markus Zarbock, head of technology at the Volkswagen Group’s Smart.Production:Lab. His development team is currently working on intelligent robotics and software for automobile production, that results in the creation of products such as Volkswagen Vision Workbench (VW²): software that recognises and processes images. “Originally, we developed VW² for visual quality control in production and logistics,” says Zarbock. “This enables colleagues to quickly check that the material supplies are all there, or that labels have been affixed correctly. It makes the job easier and saves time.”
Volkswagen software for smart cities - Artificial intelligence improves flow of traffic
Nicolas Hummel, Rolf Simon and Markus Zarbock (left to right) are part of the Smart.Production:Lab and are excited to play their part in intelligent urban planning with Volkswagen’s Computer Vision software.

Out of the box: from the factory to the road

The lab is part of Volkswagen’s Software Innovation Center, the Group’s hub of expertise for new IT solutions and innovations. “As inventors, we are always curious and asking ourselves whether it’s possible to go even further,” explains Zarbock. And VW2 went further. In a research project with the city of Carmel in the USA, Volkswagen and Scania researchers are now using the software to analyse traffic. Simply put, the software uses cameras to record the flow of traffic in the city, thus creating an extensive database. This is analysed by artificial intelligence (AI) and helps to optimise the transport infrastructure.

As inventors, we are always curious and asking ourselves whether it’s possible to go even further.
Markus Zarbock
Head of technology at the Volkswagen Group’s Smart.Production:Lab
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“Like many other cities, Carmel has a network of cameras in the public realm,” says Zarbock. “Among other things, they record traffic and have primarily been used for security purposes thus far. Now, information will also be generated for data-driven traffic planning.” Counting traffic objects such as cars, cyclists and pedestrians provides those people making decisions with information for analysing road use patterns, optimising the flow of traffic, and supporting emergency procedures. You can see where parking spaces or bus routes are needed, or where diverting the flow of traffic at peak times could improve the situation.
But the new, urban environment also presents a few challenges for the software. “The factory is a very controlled environment; it is easy to predict what will happen there. When it comes to traffic on the road, however, a raccoon might cross the road. Our algorithm wasn’t programmed for that,” recollects Zarbock. Hence, the team searched for images of raccoons and taught the AI to recognise the animals, which assists the city to identify the areas where wild animals are regularly crossing the roads, and in future, communicate the animal sightings to vehicles entering the area in near real time.
Volkswagen software for smart cities - Artificial intelligence improves flow of traffic
In Carmel, the roundabout capital, the Computer Vision software uses cameras to collect valuable data for urban planning.

Sunshine, rain, snow: Carmel is the ideal test site

“Software development is an iterative process, which means that we are continuously improving our algorithms and want to push them to their limits,” says Zarbock. Carmel has the perfect conditions for this: “It has all four seasons, meaning we need to deal with bright sunshine, frost, fog, and snow on the cameras.”

Volkswagen software for smart cities - Artificial intelligence improves flow of traffic
Traffic is tracked every ten seconds. This can be extremely helpful in extraordinary traffic situations such as major events.

The City of Carmel has a track record of exceptional innovativion. It is where the first electric traffic lights in the USA were errected in 1924, and the city now has more than 140 roundabouts – more than any other city in the United States. Carmel has a population just over 100,000 – which is four times larger than it was 30 years ago. This rapid growth in population results in a need for novel urban planning.

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The Volkswagen developers provide the city with a dashboard that uses graphics and maps to display aggregated traffic movements. Great importance is attached to anonymisation. “Even for use in production we developed the system so that people are pixelated automatically,” explains IT expert Zarbock. “Now, for use in the city, number plates are blurred.” In addition, no video recordings are stored, only the computational information.

Data enables intelligent urban planning

Another reason that the mayor of Carmel, Jim Brainard, welcomes the collaboration with Volkswagen is that he is keen to introduce new public transport options. “To do that, we need the data, and that is what we are getting from the project with Volkswagen,” says Brainard, who has been Mayor of the city for 26 years.
Current, detailed movement patterns of vehicles, people and goods allow new concepts to be optimised to suit the needs of the city and its residents. Information on hazard zones will also reduce the risk of accidents.
The video explains clearly how the Volkswagen Vision Workbench (VW²) works.

In addition to urban planners, the police force and fire brigade can also benefit from the data. Thanks to updates every ten seconds, traffic is depicted in almost real time. “This is a huge help in specific traffic situations, such as large-scale events or public emergencies,” says Zarbock. This allows first responders to react more quickly to incidents as they happen, such as an unusual cluster of vehicles, sudden gatherings of people, and last but not least, traffic accidents.

The developers are already thinking another step ahead: “We want to equip more streets with technology as a test environment for optimum use of cameras,” says Zarbock. This will make data available for a city-wide traffic model. Examples of what will be measured include routes that cyclists and electric cars prefer to take, to expand cycle paths and the charging infrastructure in a way that meets demand.

Volkswagen software for smart cities - Artificial intelligence improves flow of traffic
“For this, the cameras need to be able to identify different types of vehicles,” says Zarbock. “We’re already working on this.” And not only on this. The project is the first of its type for Volkswagen globally, but it is just the beginning. “In the long term, our software could be used in various multi-modal transport solutions around the world,” explains the developer. Initial discussions with other cities are already in progress.

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