There’s always that one road, isn’t there? The slow road, always backed up by traffic, or the intersection held up by a red light that goes on for a bit too long.
Kitchener, Ont.-based Miovision Technologies wants to fix that road and ones like it across the globe through a new partnership with one of the world’s largest location tech companies.
Miovision has helped reduce average travel times in Boston, Pittsburgh, and Portland by 25 percent.
As part of a new partnership, Miovision is bringing Dutch multinational TomTom’s traffic data to its cloud-based Miovision One data platform. Miovision claims this will increase the number of traffic intersections it covers from more than 60,000 to more than 300,000 globally, based on hundreds of millions of TomTom’s mobile data points.
Founded in 2005, Miovision develops software and hardware that help cities remotely manage and track their traffic networks through computer vision, AI, and advanced analytics. Miovision’s sensors and cameras monitor roadway activity, and its software uses that data to help cities optimize their traffic flow, including for improved traffic light timing.
TomTom makes digital maps and provides anonymized location data from mobile devices and vehicles that help drivers, car makers, businesses, and developers analyze the flow of traffic.
RELATED: Miovision nabs Traffic Technology Services in second acquisition this year
“By leveraging their market-leading live and historic traffic data, we can conduct deeper analyses of trends and enhance our traffic light timing predictions,” Miovision VP for V2X sales, Thomas Bauer, said in a statement.
Under the partnership, Miovision will distribute TomTom’s Traffic Analytics products to its public-sector clients and traffic agencies. This will make more traffic data available to the duo’s mutual customers, Miovision said, allowing them to provide congestion heat maps and more detailed corridor and highway analytics.
Ralf-Peter Schäfer, TomTom’s VP for traffic and travel information, said in a statement that combining the two companies’ products will help road authorities make smarter decisions. According to The Globe and Mail, Miovision helped reduce average travel times in Boston, Pittsburgh, and Portland by 25 percent, and emissions by 20 percent.
According to Miovision’s website, CEO Kurtis McBride was inspired to start the company when a summer job tasked him with manually collecting traffic data, vehicle by vehicle; if traffic was suddenly going west every afternoon, it was because a kid with a clipboard decided that light should go green more often. Now, computer vision collects that data.
Miovision says it serves over 5,000 customers in 68 countries, and its tech has detected more than 77 billion vehicles and 3 billion pedestrians and cyclists to date. In addition to Kitchener, Miovision has offices in the United States, Germany, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.
Feature image courtesy Denys Nevozhai via Unsplash.