Las Vegas Brings AI to Traffic Lights

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Not exactly to do with books, although it occurred to PG that using an AI program to review submissions a publisher receives and selecting the books that would sell the best has to be better than the “system” they use today.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Las Vegas is outfitting intersections with cameras and sensors to make sense of traffic patterns in real time and ease congestion.

With the help of artificial intelligence, the system counts the number of cars and passengers and captures vehicles’ direction and movements, such as turns.

So far, 30 intersections have been equipped with cameras and sensors, mostly in the central business district. The city plans to expand that to 80 intersections in the next three months.

The pilot project is part of Las Vegas’s continuing smart city effort. In such projects, sensors are installed on streetlights, power grids, transit lines and other services to collect data that can be used to deliver services to people more quickly.

Las Vegas has used the insights to change signal timing at certain times of day and to put up signage, such as wrong-way signs. The city hopes to do more to reduce traffic woes by harnessing processing power at the edge of the network—in this case literally in a device perched above street level.

“We’re still in that phase of deployment and testing, but we’re looking at efficiency gains [of] up to 40%, which means you are not spending as much time at the red light,” said Michael Sherwood, director of information technologies for Las Vegas.

. . . .

“The goal eventually is to create a smart intersection that is capable of self learning and self diagnosing and changing based on vehicle patterns,” Mr. Sherwood said.

The model could eventually serve as a building block for autonomous vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications on wired and wireless networks, he said, adding that the technology will evolve with 5G, which promises much faster speeds than current 4G, or LTE, networks.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Sorry if you encounter a paywall)