AI Used To Predicting Transport And Traffic

Artificial Intelligence has been dominating headlines, especially with previously unimaginable events now becoming a reality. This wave is poised to disrupt nearly all industries. And the first industry facing this dilemma of whether to embrace it or oppose it is the transportation industry.

It was the obvious choice as some of the first successful experiments to be demonstrated belong to this industry like driverless vehicles and real-time traffic signals. The systems are trained on the basis of a lot of historically available data to such an extent, that it can make accurate predictions of the outcome given a set of circumstances. There is no dearth of traffic data and hence, this becomes one of the first use cases. 

There are numerous benefits of using AI in the transport industry for traffic predictions, for example

1. Driverless Vehicles – As has been successfully demonstrated by a number of companies, predictive algorithms can be developed to such an extent that it is possible to run fully automated, driverless vehicles. This is turn has multiple benefits for an industry suffering from major repercussions of fatigued drivers making human errors.

1. Real time traffic flows –With traffic signals being guided by real time data and using predictive algorithms to time the signals, it is much easier to manage traffic flows.

1. Planning – with the help of AI’s predictive algorithms, it is easy for companies to plan out the best routes or the optimum location for their warehouses, thereby considerably reducing costs for transportation and increasing their profits.

The data collected is going to be extremely valuable going forward. Smart cities rely on effective planning of buildings, roads, shops, and industries to maximize throughput and minimize unnecessary overlaps. Predictive AI is a major asset in planning and executing these.