Thursday, June 1, 2017

How NVIDIA Metropolis Is Paving the Way Toward Smarter Traffic

Kurtis McBride, CEO of Miovision Technologies, an IVA startup based in Ontario, Canada, spoke to a room full of developers about his company’s efforts — and their 40 percent year-over-year growth —  to make traffic flow a little easier. Miovision’s Open City platform gets data from existing city infrastructure and the company’s own video cameras, and applies AI to create insights from it. For example, the company’s Smart Intersection optimizes traffic light timing to keep city buses moving more, and sitting at red lights less. The more efficiently bus lines run, the more likely residents are to opt for them instead of cars. Fewer cars on the roads means less traffic, lower emissions and more room for those buses to run their routes efficiently.

As of GTC, Miovision had begun preliminary work with the NVIDIA Metropolis platform for analyzing video streams, and in particular are excited about how the Jetson TX2 AI supercomputer on a module will aid their work. The company is planning small-scale trials of Open City running on the Jetson TX2 in cities across North America. And the TX2’s improved energy efficiency has them looking at future solutions that could run entirely on the sun’s rays.