Cisco invests $1 million in Adelaide IoT network

Cisco announced that it is investing $1 million Smart City technology for Adelaide to help reduce traffic congestion and create the foundations for the deployment of autonomous vehicles on busy roads.

The pilot in partnership with the government of South Australia and the city of Adelaide measures the dwell time and queue length of vehicles as they wait at an intersection, a key element for congestion monitoring.

It also calculates rolling averages across the day via a customised dashboard and a suite of metrics that show how well the traffic light sequences are operating at that intersection.

Built on Cisco Kinetic for Cities, an IoT (Internet of Things) operations platform designed to unlock the power of data from billions of connected devices, the pilot will be split into two phases.

In the first phase, six sensors will be set up at the busy intersection of Grenfell and Pulteney.

These sensors will gather intersection-approach traffic information, such as location and speed of vehicles as well as pedestrians.

With this information, tailored algorithms to recommend traffic light intervals can be recommended to improve traffic and pedestrian crossing flow.

The second phase involves an assessment of whether the same infrastructure can be applied to quickly and accurately determine the location and movements of autonomous vehicles, which is critical to being able to manage, direct and control autonomous vehicles.

The pilot will run for a week from 29 January to 3 February 2018.

Following the trial, other intersections in Adelaide will be selected to potentially test and scale the solution city-wide followed by a national roll-out.

Other technology companies including QuantumIT, SQLstream, Quanergy, Astrata, Data#3, and Bartco Visual Information Systems have also played an integral part in the pilot.

Cisco ANZ CTO Kevin Bloch says, "Traffic congestion in Australia's cities is getting worse, and we need to act now before autonomous vehicles join our already busy roads.

"We're very excited to partner with the city of Adelaide and the SA government and analyse the results of this pilot."

"We believe this technology could have a real impact on drivers, cyclists and pedestrians in Adelaide, and other cities because its traffic light network will be able to make real-time decisions.

Cisco selected Adelaide as a Lighthouse City in January 2015, one of nine across the world.