The City of San José in California will explore advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision technologies to improve local traffic safety.
The initiative will leverage the technologies to automatically detect road obstructions and other road hazards such as illegal parking in bike lanes and the dumping of large objects which pose significant risks to motorcyclists, bikers, pedestrians, scooter riders, and individuals using wheelchairs or other assistive mobility devices.
The pilot extends an initiative that the capital of Silicon Valley introduced late last year, in which new cameras were mounted on a singular city vehicle and drove on a pre-mapped route in District 10 of San José.
“For this next phase, the city has partnered with US Ignite and the Toyota Mobility Foundation [TMF] and will take a similar approach of mounting new cameras to city vehicles,” a spokesperson from the city’s IT department told Cities Today. “While other vehicles have not been confirmed for the pilot, city staff are in discussion to mount temporary cameras on more city vehicles such as street sweepers to collect a larger and more diverse set of data for evaluation.”
The US$260,000 grant from TMF funds the city’s Road Safety Condition Pilot for the next 18 months. The first two months the city will work with US Ignite to finalise the testing strategy and engage with the public for input on area hotspots, feedback about the potential use of AI to detect road conditions, and other topics relating to AI and reporting road concerns.
The most common roadway issues reported to the city through its 311 service are illegal dumping, and vehicle concerns including parking violations and potholes.
“Pothole detection has shown promising results in initial assessment before the city received the Toyota Mobility Foundation grant, [and this work] will be continued in this next phase,” added the spokesperson.
After evaluation of the results, San José’s IT Department will share the data and recommendations with partnered city departments for further discussion on next steps of the pilot.
“As a founding member of the GovAI Coalition, we believe in working with other agencies to further our knowledge of [AI] and sharing experiences to make government services more efficient together,” the spokesperson said. “Our learnings and experience working on this pilot will not only provide significant information to help San José, but for other cities across the country.”
Images: Toyota Mobility Foundation
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