Toyota recently made the news with an announcement that they weren’t planning to invest heavily in autonomous vehicles.  Far from walking away from the future of mobility however, it’s more likely a sign that they are focusing their attention elsewhere.

One example of this is a recent project the company have undertaken with the Alan Turing Institute, in the UK.  The partnership aims to transform the way cities are planned and managed by using AI to optimize the flow within mobility systems.  It’s part of a wider shift from static systems to more dynamic and optimized ones that are managed in real-time.

Managing complex cities

Not only are more of us living in cities than ever before, these environments are increasingly complex, with ride sharing platforms, city bicycle schemes and gig economy delivery drivers all adding to the usual modes of transport that get us from A to B.

Traditionally, urban transportation has relied upon models and forecasting, but the team believe that AI can raise the prospect of real-time management of traffic in response to events, conditions and mobility patterns.

City planners are increasingly able to call upon large quantities of real-time data and this promises to significantly improve how our cities are managed.  The crack team assembled for this project includes researchers and software engineers from he Universities of Cambridge and Manchester, the Turing Institute, and mobility experts from the Toyota Mobility Foundation.

The team have a number of projects in mind to kick things off, including using AI to manage traffic lights, the development of a platform to monitor and predict traffic behavior, and a mechanism to help fleet operators and cities work better together.

“Our vision is that city planners and operators should have a system that shows them real-time data feeds, lets them analyse how the city is working, integrates mathematical and computer modelling as well as machine learning models so that they can test out scenarios, and gives them insight into when behaviour patterns are changing. Because of data and new technology, transport patterns can now change dramatically in a short time. We hope that this will lead to improvements in health and mobility for city populations as well as safety and efficiency in traffic management,” the team say.