Dive Brief:
- Miovision, a traffic technology company, will roll out a generative artificial intelligence agent for traffic engineering and operations on April 7 for transit authorities and private-sector engineering firms.
- The agent enables users to ask natural-language questions about traffic congestion, near-miss collisions, emergency response times and other issues. Transit agencies can query their data to better understand issues that affect the on-time performance of trains and buses.
- “If you're a city, it's a member of your team that force-multiplies you,” said Miovision CEO Kurtis McBride.
Dive Insight:
Some cities may be overwhelmed with citizen complaints about mobility issues, McBride said. Miovision’s AI agent can reduce the time it takes to diagnose and fix these concerns from days or weeks to minutes, he said.
McBride cited an example of motorists stuck at an intersection every afternoon, with insufficient time for traffic to move during a green left-turn signal. A traffic department official could ask the AI agent, called Mateo, why that’s happening and how to fix it. The agent would parse the data for that intersection, diagnose the problem and suggest a solution.
“There are both efficiency benefits as well as safety benefits,” said Miovision Vice President of Marketing Mark Gaydos.
“Data inputs come from the roadside,” McBride said. The AI agent can interpret sensor data, diagnose the problem and suggest a solution, he said.
The company outlines four benefits of its AI agent on its website:
- Reduces the time traffic engineers spend gathering and formatting data, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives to improve mobility and safety.
- Integrates multiple data inputs into a single view, including the department’s specific network data and policies.
- Speeds up diagnostic time by up to 90%, enabling users to implement solutions more quickly.
- Translates complex charts and safety data to natural language summaries for key decision makers in the mayor’s office or city council.
Issues that might have taken traffic engineers days or a week to fix, “they can now fix in 15 minutes,” McBride said.
Inrix, Iveda and others also offer generative AI solutions for traffic management.
