[Huawei Developers] Martin Bieber:
As vehicle-to-everything (V2x) technology enables ubiquitous connectivity between people, vehicles, and urban infrastructure, the transportation experience is set to become smarter, safer, and congestion-free. Intelligent analytics will crunch huge volumes of data to create a dynamic environment that can instantly calculate optimal routes, adjust traffic light timings, create virtual lanes for emergency response, and more.

Congestion-free Citie

Smart traffic lights

Shenzhen has trialed AI technology for nine major congestion blackspots, where junctions used to be frequently blocked during morning and evening rush hours. As a result, average vehicle speed has increased by 15%, saving drivers 10 minutes on average. As intelligent, connected vehicles become more common, vehicles will communicate with each other and with traffic lights, so traffic lights at critical intersections can be optimized faster speed, and drivers will be able to better plan their routes in real time.

Intelligent traffic control

Intelligent traffic control solutions can help monitor and predict potential congestion by analyzing data from multiple sources in real time. Traffic police can prepare accordingly, before the event occurs, and temporarily re-route traffic as needed. Regulators can use the intelligent algorithms designed for complex traffic coordination problems to make real-time, dynamic arrangements for road usage and develop countermeasures for potential future issues that take the whole city’s traffic situation into account.

By fully utilizing 5G, connected intelligent cars, IoT, quantum computing, and other intelligent technologies, a “healthy” intelligent transport system can help ease the lives of busy urban residents, reduce travel costs and travel time, and boost efficiency across the city. “Green-light journeys” will be standard much sooner than you would imagine, because of highly-automated, intelligent, user-friendly city infrastructure.

Virtual Emergency Lanes

Emergency lanes are critical to health and safety. In the future, emergency responses will be handled by a combination of both automatic and human systems, rather than by human operators alone. Self-driving technologies and connected cars enabled by 5G will render physical emergency lanes unnecessary. Instead, road resources will be allocated on-demand, so that when an emergency occurs, first responder vehicles can be ensured free passage through the streets to save lives and protect the general safety.

As more and more vehicles are connected via technologies such as C-V2X, they will be able to communicate with each other, with traffic lights, and with the city traffic control center. In the event of an emergency, the central system will immediately generate the most efficient solution using its real-time data on traffic across the entire city. It will then issue instructions to all relevant vehicles so that they can clear a temporary emergency route.

According to IHS Research, by 2025, the global market for self-driving vehicles will potentially soar to US$2 trillion. Traffic accidents will be reduced, and fuel consumption and air pollution will drop by 10% and 20% respectively.