Verona tests AI sensors to improve traffic congestion and road safety

The city of Verona, Italy is testing smart sensor technology to ease traffic congestion and improve road safety. 

Currently on trial at Porta Nuova, the system collects and transmits traffic data to an operations centre supported by local servers.

Porta Nuova is a busy intersection with five entrance and six exit lanes that funnel traffic to major routes including highways to Milan and Venice.

“We chose the Porta Nuova intersection because it’s a very crucial and intense intersection in Verona next to the train station,” Tommaso Ferrari, Verona’s deputy mayor for ecological transition, mobility and the coordination of public works, told Euronews Next.

“By starting from this intersection, we can gather lots of information about our urban mobility,” he added.

The system can provide new insights into traffic patterns for the city’s traffic management which helps them make data-driven decisions, according to the developers of the system. The collected data can, for example, be used to help control traffic lights.

“This is very important for us in order to better control traffic light intersections to improve our urban mobility. Of course, the objective is to have a decision-making support system because the real-time data can support detecting the best solution for urban mobility,” Ferrari added.

The South Korean start-up behind the sensors, bitsensing, says its millimetre wave radar technology allows the TIMOS system to provide precise real-time monitoring in any environment.

The system with 120 sensors has previously been installed on a highway in South Korea, which is frequently affected by dense fog, a condition that can lead to dangerous traffic accidents.

The TIMOS system processes all the collected data internally without computers or additional hardware. Bitsensing says this can help ensure faster and more efficient data analysis.

AI used to classify different vehicles

Each sensor has a radar camera and GPU and uses artificial intelligence (AI) for comprehensive traffic management. In June, ten sensors were installed at Porta Nuova.

“AI plays a key role in enhancing seamless functionality, particularly through the ability to classify vehicles by integrating data from both radar and camera within a sensor,” Jae-Eun Lee, bitsensing’s CEO, told Euronews Next.

“While radar alone can provide accurate detection of vehicles, the addition of AI enables the system to classify different types of vehicles, which wouldn’t be possible with radar alone. This brings a new reliable level of precision to tracking management,” Lee added.

According to bitsensing, the TIMOS system can detect the vehicle types, average speeds and even calculate the estimated time of arrival of vehicles in the detection zone. 

The system can also monitor traffic violations, such as speeding, improper lane changes, wrong-way driving, jaywalking, and unauthorised stops, by tracking objects individually, the company explains.

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“TIMOS connects the data from each sensor so that a vehicle detected by multiple sensors is recognised as one continuous vehicle rather than being misidentified as separate vehicles by each sensor. It ensures a seamless tracking of vehicles as they move through the intersection, providing accurate data for managing traffic flow,” Lee said.

Bitsensing says it hopes to offer solutions to “optimise traffic flow to reduce congestion and emissions, helping cities achieve sustainability goals”.

The city of Verona says this project is aligned with its ecological transition plan aimed at lowering carbon dioxide emissions.

“Future projects like these help us all because they are support devices in order to improve urban mobility and speed up the process of reinventing urban mobility in Verona [to make it] more sustainable… with less pollution,” Ferrari said.

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“These devices can help us also with intermodality and more discipline in private cars and public transport. So they are very useful,” he added.

The current pilot project at Porta Nuova is set to run until the end of 2024. The municipality of Verona and bitsensing are in active discussions about extending it.

For more on this story, watch the video in the media player above.

Video editor • Roselyne Min