MeitY launches driver assistance, bus signal management, IoT-based smart traffic management systems

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has launched three software applications for its Intelligent Transport System (ITS) programme’s second phase. These software applications cater to three different aspects of mobility in today’s cities, including road and vehicle safety, more efficient management of public transport services, and better visibility and management of mobility services under smart city dashboards.

Researchers from the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M), along with Indian corporate conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), combined to develop the suite of three services for Indian roads.

The first of the three services is called Onboard Driver Assistance and Warning Systems, or Odaws. MeitY states that Odaws will include on-vehicle mmWave radar sensors and navigation sensors – and deliver the data through a driver assistance system in cars. The objective of the tool is similar to any advanced driver assist systems (ADAS), which look to actively monitor the immediate surroundings of a car in order to avoid road accidents.

An official statement issued by a MeitY spokesperson on the matter said that Odaws will be “used to interpret sensor data and offer real-time notifications to the driver, boosting road safety.” However, it is not clear as to how the technology will be deployed, i.e. if implementation of such smart technologies would be made mandatory of sorts, or even be retrofitted in vehicles on the road already.

It is important to note that while ADAS technologies have become increasingly available in more mainstream vehicles around the world, they largely remain reserved for luxury and premium segment consumer vehicles in India.

Other technologies that have been unveiled by MeitY as part of the ITS Phase-II programme include Bus Signal Priority System (BSPS) and Common Smart IoT ‘Connectiv’ (Cosmic). The former will seek to actively track congestions at major urban arterial road traffic junctions, and use conditional priority to facilitate faster movement of public transport services such as buses in order to reduce such congestions.

MeitY said that implementation of BSPS can reduce travel times in peak traffic hours “​​by providing priority to public transport buses, either through Green extension or Red truncation, considering all vehicles approaching a signalised intersection.”

Cosmic, meanwhile, is an open-standard IoT (internet of things) platform that is compatible with the global, OneM2M IoT compatibility standard. The latter is a common language for IoT sensors, algorithms and software that allow connected sensors and hardware built by one company to be able to exchange information, or ‘communicate’, with that built by another.

The government seeks to implement Cosmic as a common standard for all IoT deployments in public and private transport infrastructure, to be able to monitor vehicle movements through a common smart city dashboard. This can facilitate tracking of public transportation services, as well as track any road accidents – and also use data from everyday traffic patterns in order to find ways to reduce the same.