Travel and
settlement has always been fuelled by the latest tech known to man. Steam power, coal, electricity and the humble combustion engine have
propelled humans around cities and
across the seas.
But forget fossil fuels; now it's data that's helping shape the next generation of smart cars and cities where '
intelligent mobility' is the next big thing for
drivers.
Over
half of all humans – 3.5 billion of us – live in cities. By 2050, that
will double, which means we've got to find a way of making our cities
work much more efficiently – and that
means transport.
Intelligent mobility
Intelligent mobility describes any technology that increases transport network capacity while also reducing
accidents and pollution. It's largely about
collaboration, about creating both cars and cities that can communicate with each other, and react accordingly.
It starts with a car dashboard that knows about upcoming traffic jams in advance and automatically re-plots a
route to avoid it, perhaps taking into account congestion zone charges.
And
it reaches its zenith when cars automatically change speed to avoid
each other, with the idea of 'platooning' when the lead car at
traffic lights literally sets the exact pace of all cars behind – all
networked and
communicating in real-time – in an effort to get more cars through junctions as quickly as possible.
Humans
losing control of their own vehicles is a distant memory in the dreams
of transport planners, and while no world city is anywhere near that
point, some are distinctly '
smarter' than others.
Singapore: the smart governmentAn island megalopolis of five
million people,
wealthy Singapore is one of the world's greatest centres of capitalism.
Having been in government since 1959, Singapore's ruling People's
Action Party exerts
unusually strong control in this former colony of the British
Empire, and it's using its power to pioneer a particularly coherent, planned form of intelligent mobility.
"In Singapore, one of the most
connected cities in the world, operators are investing in traffic
management
systems," says Macario Namie, vice president of marketing at Jasper
Wireless, which provides a machine-to-machine network for Singtel in
Southeast Asia. "
Connectivity is impressive, not just on the
mobile side,
but also the fixed line. They take full advantage of their deep
understanding of traffic patterns and are investing in traffic
management systems, such as charge tolls based on times of traffic."
Singapore's Land
Transport Authority
has had a road pricing system since 1975 to control traffic flows and
densities, but it's a relatively new traffic monitoring scheme called
J-Eyes that has got
smart city developers excited.
Junction
Electronic Eyes (J-Eyes) is a network of surveillance cameras at
junctions across
Singapore. As of March this year there were 315 of them attached to
traffic lights and lampposts, each acting as 'remote eyes' for
operations executives at Singapore's traffic control centre. Video and photographs of congestion are automatically sent back to the
control centre;
those operations executives have so much data that they're able to
re-route lanes, sending cars in specific directions to keep traffic
flowing.
Just in
case that seems no more than a jumped-up speed camera network,
Singapore has a mature smartphone angle to its transport policy, with citizens able to download iPhone apps like TraffiCam SG, which
provides real-time images from those J-Eyes
cameras.
Songdo City: smart moneyIf Singapore is retrofitting smart driving thanks to strong, single-minded
government, Songdo City near Incheon, South Korea is something of a corporate
experiment.
Entirely privately funded, this £20 billion project's key advantage is
that it's starting from a green-field site; 1,500 acres of reclaimed
land beside the Yellow Sea.
When it's completed in 2017, Songdo will be home to 65,000 residents and 300,000 workers and students will
commute in each day. As well as an underground pneumatic waste collection
system ridding the streets of dustbin lorries, and
Cisco-provided
super-fast broadband and TelePresence videoconferencing kiosks
throughout (something that Cisco calls U.Life), Songdo will be fitted
with subway trains, an
extensive bus
and cycle network, and water taxis on a central canal. Its close
proximity to South Korea's main airport is causing some to call Songdo
an '
aerotropolis'.
With the numbers of drivers in Songdo kept to a minimum, those behind the wheel will get a brand new highway spur to
Seoul and
underground garages – 95 per cent of cars will be kept off the streets
when not in use - while both low-emitting and carpool vehicles will be
given priority parking.
Electric vehicle charging stations are being installed into both
residential and municipal garages.
Sensors in
the roads will not only measure vehicle loads and adjust traffic
measures to react, but they'll also dim the LED-lit streets when there's
no one around. And despite the tech-heavy design, the Songo's actual
layout takes its inspirations from a trio of 'old world' cities; New
York City's
Central Park, the pocket parks of
Savannah, Georgia, and the canals of Venice.
Still, to retro-fit this kind of tech and city design on an
existing 'old' city would be tricky, though the roads to intelligently
mobile cities are myriad.
Viral growth of appsInfinite computing and
communications power in vehicles will spark viral growth of web-powered smart apps on driver's
smartphones, and other hand-held devices.
"The
recent explosion
of connected power is anything but 'top down',". "Could this sort of
anarchic development, this Darwinian evolution of systems and
facilities, achieve for
mobility what the top-down
approach has never been able to achieve?"
Internet and mobile communications will be embedded in the next generation of smart cars, and while the machine to-
machine link that will allow vehicles to respond to
remote information systems is merely a bunch of sensors and a faster, more
comprehensive 4G network away.
"When cars are capable of connecting with their outside environment, the day of the top-down system will be gone forever," says
Miles, confident that a bottom-up, viral world of
interconnected and intelligent vehicles can save the day.
"Drivers will
participate in an environment of information
exchange and
automatic control for the benefit of all. Our cities will be
retro-fitted with intelligent mobility capabilities without any need for
arguments about systems, standards, and enforcement."
The
terminology can be confusing, but whether it's called the Internet of Things, 'pervasive computing', telematics or smart city thinking, the
advantages brought
by smart car connectivity don't just concern the 'harvesting' of data,
but in the mapping of urban travel patterns by predicting human
behaviours in specific settings.
RapidPRotect-- A best family, Friends and Business Members tracking mobile app
Speed App- to support the life safety of a driver.
Rapidsoftsystems-- A software and Hardware development Caompany, USA
In short, we
humans'
erratic, selfish and risky behaviour behind the wheel will ultimately
become predictable and controlled by central, all-knowing
computers that work for the good of all citizens.
That's what the real 'big society' will be about, with the driverless car
perhaps at the end of the road. For now, data-driven intelligent
mobility is where the smart money is.
