Volkswagen software for smart cities Artificial intelligence improves flow of traffic

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.”

“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.

“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.”

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.

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.