Nokia and UC Berkeley researchers gave students 100 Nokia N95 smartphones and sent them out on the road in a fleet of rental cars on a 10-mile stretch of I-80 near San Francisco. The idea of the test was to see how real-time traffic can be collected from the phone’s GPS feed while preserving privacy.
Software on the phone sent periodic and anonymous signals about ground speed based on GPS sensor data. The speed and location of the readings from the various phones were combined to create real-time traffic information, with predictions on speeds and travel times sent back to the devices.
Users can turn their participation on or off, and researcher believe that as few as 5% of users are needed to make the service effective. This feature is designed as a possible future offering from the Nokia Maps service that’s currently available on certain Nokia devices.
The project brought together research teams from the Nokia Research Center (NRC) in Palo Alto and from UC Berkeley’s California Center for Innovative Transportation (CCIT). These teams developed the algorithms, software and architecture of this GPS-based traffic monitoring system.
The tested technology holds promise to transform the way we navigate congested highways and obtain information about road conditions.
