I’m blogging from the Intelligent Transportation System
World congress in
London
.
Its certainly a “high tech” place. This
is all about tracking and handing vehicular traffic in and around our cities.
They use every possible type of sensor, from loops to satellite and everything
in between. Every booth has plasma displays, laser tracking and some type of
fancy data server to run it all.
The idea is that if we can get information on where the cars
are and how many and where they are going, we can enable traffic signals and
information systems to the vehicles and make the system run more smoothly and
automatically.
Including a gizmo that actually tracks your eyes and if they are off the road
for a certain period of time, you are alerted to take your eyes off the gal or
guy that caught them and back to the car in front of you which is now about six
inches away from your front bumper. Of course the radar installed in your car
would have also alerted you to the fact that you are closing in on an object in
front.
Here’s the Toyota Booth: Its typical
wouldn’t have to worry, because your car would be following a wire in the road
and you could be blogging, snoozing, or watching the news. The big auto
companies were there (BMW,
Toyota
,
Nissan, Volvo, gee, notice any missing) Plus all the high tech groups like
Siemens, Peek, 3M and the like.
There were some small mention of parking but only in
passing. We haven’t yet caught the eyes of this major part of the
transportation infrastructure. I’ll see
if I can change that. I have set up
meetings with the head of ITS in the
US
and perhaps we can share some
information and work on getting some data about the parking industry passed
over to the technocrats involved with ITS. A couple of joint study groups would be a good start.
On the plane tomorrow to DC and the NPA. Will fill you in from there.
J
