Analyzing Traffic using Cell Phones
Today on KCBS I heard about an experiment being done by UC Berkeley students using GPS-enabled cellphones to measure freeway traffic flow real time. In a couple of years they hope to have a system up and running.
I'm looking forward to using it someday. But pride insists that I point readers to this press release about James Gosling's talk at JavaOne in 2003. Alas, I can't find the video online. But I was his last guest presenter; I showed a proof-of-concept using JXTA peer-to-peer technology to measure and map real-time traffic flow. (Of course, as I point out in the video, budget prevented me from using real cars; the clients were simulated.)
The major points of the demo were (a) to demonstrate that peer-to-peer is not synonymous with music-stealing file sharing, and (b) to show the value proposition that underlies peer-to-peer computing: data obtained from any single car is not very useful, but
the aggregated data becomes extremely valuable to everyone when many
peers share similar data. And the more people join, the more accurate and valuable the shared data become. (This is probably why the experimenters ran 100 cars over a short length of I880--if the density of cars is too low, you don't get enough data points to wash out individual variance.)
In the end, I wonder whether this application will wind up on cellphones, or whether GPS nav systems will become ubiquitous enough that the functionality ends up in there instead. Some nav systems allow real-time traffic alerts, but I don't think it's worth paying extra for the service: the traffic alerts are generated using our conventional means and perhaps don't deserve the name "real-time." Once a substantial fraction of cars are instrumented, though, the real-time flow service can be implemented. That would be worth paying for, in my opinion; it might even be reason to get a nav system for use on routine trips (rather than getting one only when I rent a car). Revenue opportunities abound, at least for the target market that resembles me. :-)
Posted at 02:26PM Feb 08, 2008 by AceOfSpuds in General |