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."

Comments

Interesting, but only useful if widely adopted

[William Ager]

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.

Re:Interesting, but only useful if widely adopted

[cornjones]

I would think that the system would require widespread adoption in a particular area before it would even start to be useful

Not really. Initially, I would bet it is only extrapolating based on location and speed. I know somewhere like seattle (and I would be surprised if SF is much different) will have i high enough concentration of geeks w/ toys to bring back data on the major routes. If you have 1 data point on the I5 going at 15 MPH, you can guess that traffic sux. Given the volume of the people, a fairly low adoption rate will give data.

More data points will always make the system better, of course.

One of the big advantages to any of these traffic knowledge programs is that they benefit both people tapped in to the program and those not. For example, super tech guy A checks this program and sees that Road N is slammed today. He, or hopefully his software, will plan a new optimum route based on the traffic data. This removes tech guy A from the problematic traffic pattern. Luddite guy B, doesn't know any of this but his traffic pattern is eased b/c the group of people like tech guy A have avoided exacerbating the problem. As a side benefit, you have utilized your road infrastructure more completely. (recent research about limiting paths being more efficient notwithstanding)

Has been done in Bangalore in a different way

[ashraya]

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

Re:The privacy post

[ZankerH]

Until we arrive at an overtly panoptic government, I wouldn't mind volunteering for my data to be shared if it helps.

I can certainly see this being used to help the traffic control police - aka revenue generator.

Stupid...

[g0dsp33d]

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.

Re:The privacy post

[Dan541]

Forget privacy, who is going to pay for this wireless data?

Why would someone sacrifice their battery life just for another to benefit.

Few spolsports will kill it all

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Ideas seems to be good on paper, but on reality it is going to go the way Citizen Band radio went. One dumb teen who thought he was a DJ would play his scratchy cassette player over the radio and knock everyone else within his broadcast radius. Something similar could happen to this method too.

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.

Re:Who would be dumb enough to download this?

[afidel]

Actually I'm hoping Google adds this to Google Maps Mobile. Currently they use the commercial traffic services for data which means a delay of 15-30 minutes typically in getting notification about traffic jams, with realtime data from actual commuters they could provide MUCH better data. This would save me hundreds of hours per year. The government can already track you through the cellular network and Google would not turn the individual user data over to anyone else, so why wouldn't I participate?