Eric Horvitz is the president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, as well as being an AI researcher at Microsoft. When stuck in traffic one day in Seattle, he asked his nav system to reroute him via side streets, and the result was worse than being stuck on the highway. That incident turned into four years of research and data collection on traffic patterns to create the Clearflow traffic avoidance system for Microsoft's web portal-based Live Search Maps.
The point of Clearflow is to provide accurate route information that gives you the best chance to avoid traffic on highways and on the side streets. By logging data from 16,500 trips over 125,000 miles, Microsoft engineers came up with algorithms to predict traffic flow on highways and adjacent streets, the latter of which can be even more crowded than the main arteries.
Using the data collected in Seattle, along with the results from highway sensors, the system works for 72 cities, and can "predict congestion based on time of day, weather and other variables like sporting events." Clearflow went live Thursday, April 10, with the choice to "Choose route based on traffic".
[Source: New York Times]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Avinash machado @ Apr 14th 2008 9:11AM
There is a saying. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
David(Postal) @ Apr 14th 2008 9:27AM
Sounds like a great system! I used to live in DC and I know a city like that, this system would be great! It was always so hard to judge what routes to take since there could be traffic problems anywhere
Edsel @ Apr 14th 2008 9:31AM
Can Clearflow predict traffic accidents, flat tires, left lane diddlers, and drive-by shootings?
saycheese @ Apr 14th 2008 10:00AM
It can't predict them, but can route around them, provided the traffic sensors pick up the data and update them promptly.
Alex @ Apr 14th 2008 9:34AM
IA has a long way to go in traffic and route planning, this sounds like a step in the right direction.
It irks me when my GPS gives me a route but clearly doesn't take into account things like traffic lights or congestion based on time of day. You wouldn't even need a traffic monitoring serivce. it could just assume that at 5:30pm traffic on X major road will be heavy while at 2am it will be light.
this sounds like a good move forward.
Alex @ Apr 14th 2008 9:35AM
uggh... AI, not IA.
Jim @ Apr 14th 2008 9:53AM
This is a good idea and a good step towards more refined mapping.
west @ Apr 14th 2008 10:59AM
I don't get this at all.
So they've compiled data to predict where traffic is most likely to be. How does this help? Doesn't everyone know where traffic always is? For example, I live in DC and traffic looks like that pic every day of the year. Obviously, I realize they can input current information and change but that's not progress.
MS or Google or Garmin or whoever needs to be spending their research dollars on creating technologies that more accurately monitor current conditions and give instant updates, not tell commuters what they already know. Good thing I walk.
saycheese @ Apr 14th 2008 11:05AM
If you already knew all the roads and their traffic conditions, what do you need a GPS for? GPS is to aid you navigate unknown routes as efficiently as possible.
Google or Garmin or TomTom don't build or maintain the traffic sensor networks. They get their updates from the existing networks. But the routing decisions based on the traffic patterns could be made more intelligent, like mentioned in the above article.
Sometimes, the GPS tries to take you along side-streets when the highways are clogged, and you end up getting stuck longer at the stop lights and slower speed-limited streets than by staying on the highways a bit longer.
Having more information like stop-lights, current-events, accidents etc. in the area helps you to better predict if taking certain route at a certain time of the day would help you reach your destination more efficiently.
Rick @ Apr 14th 2008 11:16AM
Microsoft? And what happens when you get the 'blue screen of death'?
porschedevotee @ Apr 14th 2008 3:19PM
That's reserved for calamities, like a terrorist attack.
why not the LS2LS7? @ Apr 14th 2008 11:17AM
By using data collected in Seattle, they can predict the traffic on the streets around my house? I smell hype.
NAV systems don't even know that there's a divider on the road at one end of my street and so you can't turn into it from the east, or turn out of it to the west.
The hard truth about NAV systems is that if you've lived in an area a while, you're better informed about the specifics of the area (including traffic) than the NAV is. What a NAV is great for is telling you how to get around an area you don't already know how to get around. And this doesn't appear to be any different, because they took data in Seattle (note, most of us don't live in Seattle) and are going to extrapolate information about other areas based upon that.
Zane @ Apr 14th 2008 11:59AM
Wow, it's funny how they're talking about a newer system when they can't sort out the major mess in Garmin x80 nuvis a.k.a. "MSN life traffic feed".
Niralisherni @ Apr 14th 2008 12:32PM
Sounds like a good idea if people can be given advance warning of traffic snarls so that they know which routes to avoid.
Commuter @ Apr 14th 2008 1:16PM
If only it lived up to its press release billing. I ask it for a route from Elgin, IL to northwest Indiana in the mid-afternoon. The prudent choice would be to take I90 to I294, possibly using I290 in between. It's recomendation? Go straight through downtown Chicago in the face of the impending afternoon rush hour. This common mapquest/google maps mistake will cost you 2 to 3 hours. Seriously, how much sense does that make? Back to the drawing board, boys.
SimbaDogg @ Apr 14th 2008 1:22PM
this is semi useless to me....traffic is always changing, sure it will help you get from one place to another, but what if i need to go from point B to point C later in the day, and i'm using windows live search on my phone to do that. MS needs to hurry up and update WLS for mobile devices. Same w/ google as well. They both have really cool features, and both have their fair share of querks.