IBM announced yesterday a new research initiative that could slash travel times, by building personalized routes for commuters to avoid traffic gridlock.
At a smart transportation event in Washington D.C, IBM announced that its researchers are using advanced analytics to develop adaptive traffic systems. These systems, in theory, could “learn” traveler patterns and behavior–sort of like an advanced version of TomTom’s IQ Routes for its GPS devices, which is based on historical data.
The researchers are developing models that go one step further, and actually predict the outcomes of different transportation routes, from which it will devise personalized recommendations for specific commutes. This is much more useful than plain traffic reporting, which talks about jams after they happen in the hopes that commuters can learn the reports and avoid the jams in time (often without success).
There’s no word yet when we could see consumer-level applications of this technology. For more information on the research, visit IBM’s dedicated Smart Traffic site. (Image credit: IBM)