Now, Nokia Wants to Control
Traffic
Its Mobile Millennium
initiative will study traffic data received from GPS-enabled mobile
devices. Nokia Research Center is collaborating with UC Berkeley's
California Center for Innovative Transportation (CCIT), the California
Department of Transportation (Caltrans), and NAVTEQ for creating a
smooth traffic system.
Nokia believes that a
community of users with GPS-equipped mobile devices can help reduce
traffic and the amount of time spent on the road. Providing real-time
information about traffic congestion helps drivers make more informed
decisions - such as whether to take alternative routes, public
transport, or reschedule their journey.
Traditional traffic
monitoring systems include pavement-embedded sensors, roadside radar or
cameras to provide data for changeable message signs or traffic reports.
But such systems, says Nokia, are costly to install and maintain and so
they only cover limited stretches of today's roads and highways.
Using GPS-enabled mobile
devices can provide a complementary source of traffic data. Traffic flow
data can be expanded to include city side streets, rural roads or any
roadway where a cell phone can get a signal. The Mobile Millennium
traffic data is based in part on the backbone technology of NAVTEQ
Traffic, which provides nation-wide aggregated traffic data in the US
from a variety of sources, now including real-time data from GPS-enabled
mobile phones in vehicles traveling on the highways.
Participation in Mobile
Millennium is open to anyone with a GPS-enabled mobile phone from a
range of manufacturers, an unlimited data plan and the ability to
install and run Java applications.
The Java application enables
participants to receive real-time traffic data and incident reports for
main thoroughfares throughout much of the United States. In the Northern
California area, a number of arterials and highways that are not
currently equipped with sensors will begin to show traffic data as more
users join the network.
While the user-generated
content is completely anonymous, each data point contributes a piece to
the traffic picture which can benefit the entire user community. The
pilot will operate over four to six months and up to 10,000 members of
the public community can participate.
According to Nokia,
protection of personal privacy was built into the very core of the
reporting technology used in Mobile Millennium. From inception,
researchers built safeguards into the system, such as stripping
individual device identifiers from the transmitted traffic data, using
banking-grade encryption techniques to protect the transmission of data,
and drawing data only from targeted roadways where traffic information
is needed.
This Privacy By Design
system continuously filters information to remove data that can be tied
to a particular phone, minimizing the amount of sensitive information
ever created, transmitted or stored.
Mobile Millennium is being
funded in part by a grant award from the US Department of Transportation
under the SafeTrip-21 initiative, informs Nokia.
