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Project Turns GPS Phones Into Traffic Reporters
narramissic writes "Starting on Monday, researchers from Nokia and UC Berkeley will kick off the Mobile Millennium project. The researchers hope that thousands of volunteers will download a free Java program that figures out by their movement and location when they are driving, and then transmits that information to the project's servers, which then crunch it into a Bay Area traffic map. 'The whole concept here is that if everyone shares just a little bit of what they're seeing ... then everyone can benefit by seeing the conditions ahead of them,' said Quinn Jacobson, a research leader with Nokia in Palo Alto."
I'm sure the data is anonymized, but how well? Will people be comfortable with having their phone track them? Anyone know? Didn't RTFA yet... ;)
.: Max Romantschuk
The project seems interesting, and there does appear to be at least some consideration for keeping the data secure.
However, I would think that the system would require widespread adoption in a particular area before it would even start to be useful, and considering that it will only run on the small percentage of phones that have GPS to begin with, and there isn't much incentive in the beginning for users to install the software, I'm not sure that such an idea will be viable for at least a few more years.
Come on. Don't they know the reason we all listen to the half-hour-out-of-date traffic reports from the helicopter reporters is the same as why we watch Nascar and Indy car races? The chances of a crash and the anticipation of mayhem are the whole idea. Not to mention the cheesy chopper sound track they add.
This takes all that out of it. It guarantees a daily fender-bender on I-95 while drivers fiddle with the app. Whoop-de-doo.
Well, maybe if they keep the chopper sound effects.
I of course wish them good luck. One of the last commercial attempts to do this, Dash Express, recently revealed it did no go as well as originally planned.
Animoog.org
TomTom takes anonymized location information from mobile phone handsets in The Netherlands, and make traffic reports they call HD traffic.
The handsets are not (necessarily) equipped with GPS chips, but their location is triangulated by the GSM network itself. The mobile network (Vodafone NL) supplies the information to TomTom, who then process it into traffic reports.
They claim to cover 10 times more roadarea than conventional traffic detection that uses inductive loops embedded in the roads. (The conventional system is already quite extensive in The Netherlands, which is a small and densely populated country). I seem to recall TomTom also have some sort of patent.
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You and your 50 coworkers get to the office and forget to turn off that app? Massive non-existent traffic jam?
"The whole concept here is that if everyone shares just a little bit (...) then everyone can benefit"
That would solve a lot of the world problems, not just traffic.
In Bangalore, they tried to do this in a different way by looking at the number of cell phones that connect to various towers etc., without using GPS. Check out the links at http://btis.in/live.htm ashraya
It's already commercially available here in the Netherlands. Tomtom teamed up with vodaphone, which can locate their mobile phones location and speed (not necessarily GPS needed) . This is fed to tomtom, which displays it on your navigation system. More info here
Shame, would have been nice, if they used world maps.
There's already a cell-phone based system. People with phones call local radio stations when there's a delay. Unfortunately it probably won't help much. If there were a good alternative, there probably wouldn't be traffic to begin with. I commute on 95 & PA turnpike, and if its closed, I'm pretty much screwed into a 3 times as long commute. Getting an instant update won't really do anything other than give me a few more minutes of misery through anticipation.
lol: You see no door there!
*considers existence of FaceBook*
Nevermind.
NaviExpert does it in Poland since 2007.
As opposed to the methods that other posters have already noted that rely on "how many connections to this cell tower", running some Java application on your phone is going to require a lot of battery usage isn't it? The "smart" part of the phone can't go to sleep can it?
There already such service operating for years. Local search (initially. now... you know..) service engine providing users with downloadable map app which can optionally use device's GPS to submit data and view traffic density based on that.
In Poland we have commercial on-line navigation systems for phones (including BT communication with external GPS) that IMHO works extremally well. I bought 2 years subscription for about 100 USD (200 PLN).
System consists of small java app with voice navigration and turn-by-turn guide on-screen with map preview including "autoroute view".
Novelty that you by default switch ON community feature that sends back data gathered by system.
Routes are created on server, based on average time to travel through a certain route, depending of time and day of the week.
I think an even bigger issue with the immediately-out-of-date traffic report is that once the crash is cleared and the traffic at the front of the line starts moving they consider the problem resolved. They do not take into account the ripple effect sending echoing "shockwaves" of traffic stalls up and down the highway.
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hehehe... It might be kinda fun to take a phone on this system and go spin in circles for hours on a merry-go-round in a playground.
I wonder what other mischief you get into with one of these?
This could have a far better use. As the technology develops and power consumption drops it could be a benefit to 911 services. Currently the technology to aquire the location of a cell phone call to emergency numbers is crude or non-existent. If a caller is unable to talk but still has the wherewithall to call 911 he is unable to tell them where he is, with a system like this it would allow response personel to still find them.
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
The data streams are anonymous and users voluntarily download and install a java program. Wow! What can go wrong?
A few spoilsports will hack the java program to give misleading reports, multiple reports. Initially I don't see any benefit to the hackers. But the script kiddies do not think rationally. They do it anyway.
Why can't the cell towers simply track the number of phones each tower is pinging? Then the net gain and net loss of number of phones, plotted over time, gives the direction of movement of the population of cell phones. That should be enough to give a good idea of the traffic. This would be a better way to find/predict traffic congestion than asking thousands of peoples to actively report their positions.
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Garmin and Navteq have had this out for a while...there is a radio receiver in some Garmin GPS units that receives traffic reports and will automatically create detour routes around traffic, accidents, or even construction.
Don't worry, guys, I'm sure Lucius Fox will destroy the computer that holds all the phone calls recorded by this app. He's just going to use it to find the bomb. And then track down the guys who planted the bomb. Might as well find Osama while he's at it. Plus he should do a quick check on who's talking about the Nation of Islam. Wait-- don't turn your phone off! Don't you need to "call" your girlfriend tonight?
-1 raving lunatic
a warrant from a judge will allow homicide investigators access to your cellphone provider's accumulated data, including tower connections. omg, the humanity!
this has nothing to to with the project being discussed
this also has nothing to do with the feds and real-time tracking.
Commercial GPS devices have been making use of traffic message channels (TMCs) not long after they were introduced. This will provide similar information for low traffic streets, but does tht make it very useful?
Those poor bastards, they have us surrounded. Now we can fire at them in all directions!
from other studies, can we change this so we can figure out who the idiots
causing most of the traffic jams are? It can just automatically mail them
a ticket for being stupid?
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
-1 raving lunatic
a warrant from a judge will allow homicide investigators access to your cellphone provider's accumulated data, including tower connections. omg, the humanity!
And Britain's anti-terror laws won't ever be used for purely economic reasons against another nation, say Iceland. And the Patriot Act will never be misapplied to things like copyright violation cases, etc etc. Nope, nobody will ever misuse a tool for something other than its stated purpose because that would be wrong!
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Eh, what? Where did they promote Nokia? Because Nokia's part of the summary due to they are in the article?
Enlighten me how they're promoting please...
But on with the show. Cute network, cute device. What's the lifetime on the site you reckon? 5 years? Honest answer please.
2^3 * 31 * 647
So now people will be watching their phone screens more than they already are, looking for traffic updates.
"Hmmm... phone says traffic is slowing down ahe**WHAM!**"
Rear end collision! Phone sends update of new stoppage in traffic.
Is it the user's responsibility to turn it off when not in a car? Unless the system works absolutely in the background, I don't see it playing out that well. Testing this in the Bay Area, I foresee a lot of volunteers walking down the streets of San Francisco passively reporting as slow traffic (I assume the GPS isn't differentiating between the 5 foot gap from sidewalk to street). Not that I wouldn't find pedestrian foot traffic data interesting, but I'm doubting it's useful for Mobile Millennium purposes.
While it's a little inconvenience, connecting a car charger goes a long way. If you've got an unlimited data plan, why wouldn't you use this?
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Take this concept a bit further. Let's say in 10 years, GPS is standard in enough vehicles on the road to make traffic status very accurate.
Assuming that fossil fueled vehicles are still present, why couldn't a government entity track your road time/route, calculate a pollution or road usage tax based on your actual driving activities and the known MPG rating of your vehicle? One already has to register his/her vehicle (including, year, make and model) with the state. Coupling that with the MPG rating and your driving data could easily be translated to a usage/pollution tax. The government could sell it as an incentive for purchase more fuel efficient vehicles, thus reducing pollution, and/or encouraging greater use mass transit.
as a biker, i have to think that i and my fellow bikers would be reporting incorrect traffic data to the server since we are allowed to split the lanes in california. at this point there are probably not enough bikes on the road to make a serious dent in a normal use of the apps, but if all of us used it and very few cars did, would it not report incorrect traffic flow?
If you search the /. archives back some years, you'll see Pac Tel did the same thing in the bay area ages ago... they got towers, they got users phones, they can tell if they're moving or not.
While it's a little inconvenience, connecting a car charger goes a long way. If you've got an unlimited data plan, why wouldn't you use this?
Connecting to a car charger is also reputedly bad for battery longevity.
To really make this handy, they need to tie the phones into people's radar detectors and report that data as well.
... different cell carriers will have different rates for GPS usage. Up here in Canada, where monopolistic cell providers are screwing us, I can hear their bean-counters rubbing their hands and giggling in glee.
How is this news? AFAIK TomTom uses this technique for their traffic services for *ages*.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
It is going to be very inefficient tool for traffic monitoring, every expert in traffic knows that the traffic flow management requires much more than just monitoring cars. It is required to track speed, project accordeon effects, forecast congestion, etc. Video traffic monitoring deployed on highways in europe is closest to the real time traffic monitoring. The background of Nokia's project is again, catch the mobile users and trick them into generating more traffic for mobile operators. Are you really willing to pay the price? It was the same story with LifeBlog, upload constantly what you want and the rest as well. Some prefer Shozu, some Wavelog, some other Kablog, but how many really use LifeBlog? Stick to your GPS for navigation and forget uploading your position all the time...
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TomTom's "HD Traffic" gets information on traffic speed from all drivers who have a Vodaphone cell phone in their car.
It does not require each of those drivers to have TomTom devices. It does not require the cell phones to have GPS trackers. It does not require the cell phones to use air time or have unlimited data plans, or even have the ability to connect to the internet.
[Disclosure: I work for TomTom. Whenever I go down to the lunch room, I walk by the HD traffic control center where they collect and distribute all the traffic information -- it has a glass wall like a fish tank with a big screen in front displaying the live traffic feeds.]
The "chicken and egg" and "critical mass" problems are solved by combining traffic data from several different source, and getting a lot more data points than we would get if we only collected data from drivers who have a TomTom that's always connected to the internet with an unlimited data plan.
The other question is how to TomTom users receive this real time traffic information. The TomTom devices that support HD traffic have their own cell phones with built-in SIM cards, whose cost is covered by the HD traffic subscription, so it can download traffic reports in real time. It does not require you to drain the batteries and increase the bill of your own cell phone. The TomTom device is usually plugged into the car charger.
There's another feature called "IQ Routes" that enables TomTom to plan intelligent routes even when they're not connected to the internet, based on historical time sensitive information. Traffic on different roads has different speeds at different times of day and different weekdays, so IQ Routes measures that, and takes it into account when planning routes. Then HD traffic can add another layer of real time traffic information to make the routes even more accurate.
TomTom devices (even if they're not connected to the internet live) can record the speed you drive along the roads you travel, and if you choose to opt in, they anonymize and upload that data when you hot-sync your device to your PC or Mac (using your computer's internet connection instead of requiring a wireless data plan). Then they download the aggregation of all other TomTom user's traffic speed information. So each time you hot-sync, you get fresh traffic data based on the latest measurements of many other TomTom users.
All this data is also fed back into improving the maps, correcting mistakes, and tracking changes. Since the roads are always changing, you can get a discount by subscribing to map updates, to get fresh maps and points of interest updated regularly. We also offer traffic camera (speed trap) subscriptions, so the TomTom can warn you to slow down before you get speeding tickets.
-Don
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The problem with using your cell phone as a personal navigation device, is that when the batteries run out quickly, you can't call for help. You're lost AND disconnected at the same time.
TomTom's HD Traffic and IQ Routes (which I described in a message above) works well because it runs on a separate device that has its own dedicated cell phone and SIM card, which plugs into your car charger for power. Plus it has a big touch screen, a loud speaker, and a dashboard mount, which makes it much more safe to use hands free while driving. So you don't have to stop talking on your phone, use your phone's batteries, or use your phone's data plan, to download real time traffic updates.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
The system will show that traffic on Bart's above-grade lines to be heavy, but moving well.
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.
It does not require each of those drivers to have TomTom devices. It does not require the cell phones to have GPS trackers. It does not require the cell phones to use air time or have unlimited data plans, or even have the ability to connect to the internet.
Which was critical in the beginning when there weren't many Nav systems out there and wireless data service via cell phone wasn't a commodity.
The "chicken and egg" and "critical mass" problems are solved by combining traffic data from several different source, and getting a lot more data points than we would get if we only collected data from drivers who have a TomTom that's always connected to the internet with an unlimited data plan.
Sounds more like "were" solved; like I said before in the post you're responding to, this was probably a killer feature when there weren't many Nav systems out there.
The other question is how to TomTom users receive this real time traffic information. The TomTom devices that support HD traffic have their own cell phones with built-in SIM cards, whose cost is covered by the HD traffic subscription, so it can download traffic reports in real time. It does not require you to drain the batteries and increase the bill of your own cell phone. The TomTom device is usually plugged into the car charger.
That's great, although I think the number of mobile phone users with limited data plans are dwindling fast, besides, if they're paying for the dataplan on the TomTom embedded cell phone, why not just pay for that same data on their main phone instead? You're not streaming video; I doubt anyone would notice the battery loss from getting time between point info on the three most likely routes, nor transmitting the time it took to drive between two points; pretty low-bandwidth stuff.
There's another feature called "IQ Routes" that enables TomTom to plan intelligent routes even when they're not connected to the internet, based on historical time sensitive information. Traffic on different roads has different speeds at different times of day and different weekdays, so IQ Routes measures that, and takes it into account when planning routes. Then HD traffic can add another layer of real time traffic information to make the routes even more accurate.
TomTom devices (even if they're not connected to the internet live) can record the speed you drive along the roads you travel, and if you choose to opt in, they anonymize and upload that data when you hot-sync your device to your PC or Mac (using your computer's internet connection instead of requiring a wireless data plan). Then they download the aggregation of all other TomTom user's traffic speed information. So each time you hot-sync, you get fresh traffic data based on the latest measurements of many other TomTom users.
Definitely another kick-ass, clever method of getting traffic info, which will probably outlive the former.
I think the 1st method (triangulating cell signals to determine traffic speed/embedding a dedicated cell phone in the Nav unit for receiving data/etc.) has a limited future; great technology/strategy in the beginning with a low density of devices deployed (especially when you can take advantage of another device that _is_ widely deployed, even though you are getting less precise data), or when adequate cheap mobile bandwidth wasn't a given, however as time goes on it will just be a more complex and costly than necessary to get the job done. Convergence rather than duplication here is a no-brainer. If TomTom doesn't do it, one of your competitors will and will force the issue for you; they'll get rid of the embedded mobile phone and sell a smaller Nav unit for a higher profit margin.
The 2nd method (currently store and forwarding the data when a user syncs their Nav unit to their PC, and the PC syncing to TomTom/more broadly stated as "let the GPS worry a
Why wasn't this in v1.0 of consumer GPS? It's not like collecting data from client devices to compute on the server, for use by the client community, is mind-boggling genius. It's kind of the reason for the client-server model in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I'm not panning the article, just suggesting this industry does not appear to be very competitive.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
In the Netherlands the TomTom HD service works together with a mobile operator to track cell phones position changes along the highways and then calculates the congestion from it. Check out http://www.traphic.nl/ during rush hours (like 8:00 or 17:00, all GMT+1).