How big data will revolutionise driving Posted on : Sep 21 - 2017

Big data will help lay the foundations for smart cities and in turn support the development of autonomous vehicles.

The race to full autonomous driving has dominated the headlines in recent years, with challenger brands, such as Uber and Tesla, competing with conventional manufactures such as Volvo and BMW to launch the first fully autonomous mass market car. However, while the idea of driverless vehicles has gathered extensive media attention, the technology that underpins these developments has fallen underneath the radar.  

Away from the media gaze, automakers and transport companies have been quietly investing in big data, installing sensors and trackers in to their cars and our surroundings to continuously collect data and provide them with better insight into the evolving nature of our cities. It’s big data that will one day put autonomous vehicles in our roads, help us understand and improve traffic flow and eliminate the need for parking management.  

Developments in analytical techniques, powered largely by artificial intelligence and machine learning, are allowing automakers, IoT companies and city planners to analyse big data with increasing levels of sophistication, accuracy and speed. But how will these increasingly detailed insights transforming the transport sector?

Reducing congestion  

One of the most noteworthy applications of big data is the ability to map data quickly, precisely and effectively - for the transport sector this means being able to map traffic flow and congestion in real time. Numerous cities across the globe are creating new data management systems to collect data from multiple sources, including smart and dumb sensors, and provide a real-time picture of travel on their roads. These data sets can help create detailed pictures of the city, and insights into where people are going and how they are getting there. By collating this data in open source platforms and encouraging collaboration, counsels can help make this data accessible to citizens, allowing them to make decisions on the best transportation options at any given time. View More