Live Experiment on the California Highway Showcases a Solution to a Global
Problem
PALO ALTO and BERKELEY, California, February 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/
-- Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and UC Berkeley researchers today tested technology
that could soon transform the way drivers navigate through congested
highways and obtain information about road conditions. One hundred cars
equipped with the GPS-enabled Nokia N95, and driven by students from the
University of California, traveled a 10-mile stretch of highway near San
Francisco to show how real-time traffic information can be collected from
the GPS feed, while preserving the privacy of the devices' owners.
The experiment was carried out to test the traffic data collection and
aggregation system, while studying the trade-offs between data accuracy,
personal privacy, and data collection costs. The software aggregating the
GPS feeds immediately disassociates that data from an individual device and
combines it with the general stream of traffic data. To protect privacy,
all data is anonymous and aggregated, and protected by banking-grade
encryption
During the experiment, special software on the mobile devices
periodically sent anonymous speed and location readings from the integrated
GPS to servers. The feeds were then combined to create a real-time picture
of traffic speeds and projected travel times.
"Mobile device users control the service. If an individual does not
want their device to transmit position data they turn off the feed from
their GPS," stated Quinn Jacobson, Research Leader at Nokia Research
Center, Palo Alto.
"Nokia is very excited at the potential for this system to
revolutionize travel planning, carrying on from the Nokia Maps navigation
service available today on certain Nokia devices," continued Jacobson.
"Integration of traffic information with functions such as calendar and
online timetables may one day mean the mobile device can act as personal
travel planner."
"There are mobile device-based systems out there that can collect data
in a variety of ways, such as measuring signal strength from towers and
triangulating position, but to our knowledge, this is the first
demonstration of this scale using GPS-enabled mobile devices to provide
traffic related data such as travel times, and with a deliberate focus on
critical deployment factors like bandwidth costs and personal privacy
issues," said Director Thomas West, director, UC Berkeley's California
Center for Innovative Transportation.
The researchers believe that fewer than 5% of drivers need to
contribute location data for the system to be effective on any particular
highway.
For state transportation agencies such as The California Department of
Transport (Caltrans), tapping into the vast network of mobile phones on the
road could one day remove the need to invest in expensive infrastructure to
obtain traffic information as well as greatly expanding the coverage of
such services.
In the USA alone congestion causes 4.2 billion hours extra travel every
year and the purchase of extra 2.9 billion gallons of fuel for a congestion
cost of USD 78 billion(1). With the number of vehicles on the road
increasing rapidly around the world a cost-effective method of travel
planning could help drivers make smarter decisions about which routes to
take, the researchers say.
The project brings together research teams from the Nokia Research
Center (NRC) in Palo Alto and from UC Berkeley, interacting through UC
Berkeley's California Center for Innovative Transportation (CCIT). These
teams are developing the algorithms, software and architecture of this
GPS-based traffic monitoring system.
The project is supported by a USD 186,000 grant from Caltrans.
Additional support comes from the National Science Foundation, Nokia,
Tekes, Rutgers University's WINLAB, the University of California
Transportation Center and the Volvo Center of Excellence for Future Urban
Transport at UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies.
(1) 2007 Urban Mobility Report, September 2007, Texas Transportation
Institute, David Schrank & Tim Lomax
About Nokia Research Center
Nokia Research Center (NRC) looks beyond Nokia's existing business and
product development to challenge current strategies and to stimulate
renewal in the company's direction. Working closely with all Nokia business
units, NRC's research explores new frontiers in digital services,
physical-digital connections, human interaction, data and content
technologies, device architecture, and access and connectivity. NRC
promotes open innovation by working on research projects in collaboration
with universities and research institutes around the world. For more
information, see our website: http://research.nokia.com.
About Nokia
Nokia is the world leader in mobility, driving the transformation and
growth of the converging Internet and communications industries. Nokia
makes a wide range of mobile devices and provides people with experiences
in music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games and business. Nokia
also provides equipment, solutions and services for communications
networks.
http://www.nokia.com
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SOURCE Nokia Corporation
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CONTACT:
Media Enquiries: Nokia, Communications, Tel.
+358-7180-34900, Email: press.services@nokia.com; Nokia,
Americas, Communications, Tel. +1-972-894-4573 , Email:
communication.corp@nokia.com; UC Berkeley, Communications, Tel:
+1-510-643-7741, Email: scyang@berkeley.edu
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