Google wants to fight traffic jams and pollution caused by traffic lights using AI
Traffic lights could soon be a less hassle © Hadrian/Shutterstock
AI is often criticized for its enormous energy consumption. What if, to compensate, it were intelligently used to reduce fuel consumption and, in fact, pollution? This is in any case the idea behind an initiative by Google researchers, called Project Green Light.
Traffic lights, sources of multiple problems
Selected among several Google Research projects designed to accelerate climate change mitigation, Project Green Light aims to tackle traffic lights at intersections. Between the traffic jams they generate and the many starts/accelerations of vehicles there, they are a very significant source of pollution. Up to 29 times more than a conventional road.
Using data from Google Maps driving trends, an AI model is first able to measure traffic flow at an intersection. Average waiting times, start and stop patterns, and coordination between adjacent intersections are all taken into account. Then, the AI identifies possible improvements (better coordination between intersections, shortening the duration of a red light, etc.) and informs the engineers in charge of these lights to implement them.
Green Light offers a dashboard for each city © Google
A project already active in several cities
This project is compatible with existing installations, and Google is already working with several cities to improve the flow of their traffic at intersections with traffic lights. Rio de Janeiro, Seattle, Bengaluru and Boston are among the cities concerned. For the moment, Green Light is operational on more than 70 intersections, making it possible to act on the consumption and pollution of 30 million vehicles per month. In the coming years, the team behind the project intends to increase these figures. The first figures show a reduction in stops of 30% and emissions of 10%.
Dotan Emanuel, a software engineer on the team behind the project, says: “You know how when you hit a sequence of five green lights, you feel like it's your lucky day? We want that feeling to be shared by more people around the world.“
