• Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Smart Transport HUB Ltd to develop and pilot the world’s first in-vehicle mobile urban monitoring technology powered by artificial intelligence (AI)
• Technology aims to reduce emissions, lower pollution levels and reduce road accidents
• The partnership will result in a shift from reactive to proactive highway maintenance, addressing issues including potholes and traffic signage in the hope of easing congestion and reducing accidents.

The research team and Smart Transport HUB Ltd will work together in a new Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) to capture highway asset information and road conditions using hardware integrated with sophisticated machine vision and machine learning to analyse camera feeds in real-time and relay information to highway contractors.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, funded by Innovate UK, are collaborations between a business, a university and a highly qualified research associate. The UK-wide programme helps businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills. Aston University is a sector-leading KTP provider, ranked first for project quality, and joint first for the volume of active projects.

This novel technology will improve road network conditions and traffic management, enhance highway maintenance operations by enabling timely repairs and increase productivity while reducing costs through automated surveys over larger geographic areas instead of manual site-specific surveys.It will also lead to better traffic conditions and improved health and safety, resulting in fewer accidents, as well as reduced emissions and lower pollution levels.

By combining sector-leading academic and industry expertise, the KTP will create a world-first mobile technology for real-time traffic monitoring that can function in busy city environments and in all weather conditions.

Nicola Mastini, principal consultant at Smart Transport HUB, said: “Aston University is right at the forefront of research in AI and deep learning for traffic simulation.

“The KTP gives us a unique opportunity to integrate some of that knowledge and use this as a basis for upscaling our team, boosting our productivity, and developing a very unique and attractive commercial product.”

Dr Maria Chli, reader in applied AI & robotics at Aston University’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and Application, said: “Developing a smart mobile traffic monitoring and management system that harvests data from multiple vehicles and updates our traffic simulator is going to require a lot of innovation.

“We have the expertise to share with Smart Transport HUB, and together with their unique data-driven approach, I’m excited about the benefits we can bring to the transport sector.”

Aston University has a global reputation for developing cutting-edge AI that is directly applicable to addressing smart cities’ challenges. The KTP project’s academic team is an acknowledged leader in traffic signal control using AI, and works at the forefront of AI-driven, accurate traffic simulation and traffic actor modelling. The team will draw heavily on the unique Aston simulation model, Traffic 3D, to deliver the project utilising their broader capabilities in machine learning, deep reinforcement learning, object detection and action recognition.