Las Vegas turns to artificial intelligence to help control the city's traffic lights

This week, Las Vegas officials announced a new plan to deal with the city’s notorious gridlock and congestion.

The city is installing cameras and traffic sensors connected to an artificial intelligence system at intersections throughout the city to help direct traffic in a more efficient way.

The system will be used to make changes in the timing of traffic lights and the location of digital traffic signs, such as those that announce lane closures.  

Las Vegas announced a new plan to manage the city’s brutal gridlock with a network of AI-connected cameras and sensors installed at intersections throughout the city

So far, 30 intersections have been equipped with the sensors, and the city plans to add another 50 by next February. 

According to officials, the system should deliver efficiency gains of up to 40 percent to the daily traffic flow.

‘The goal eventually is to create a smart intersection that is capable of self-learning and self-diagnosing and changing based on vehicle pattern,’ Las Vegas’s director of IT Michael Sherwood told the Wall Street Journal.

Data collected by the cameras and traffic sensors will be sent to a server stored in Las Vegas’s City Hall, where AI software developed by Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corporation will analyze the information.

The city claims the system destroys the video and image files after they’ve been analyzed by the AI to protect individual privacy.

The data produced by the AI is then sent to a data storage facility around ten miles away from City Hall, where city officials can look through it in archival form.

Las Vegas officials hope to eventually integrate self-driving cars into the AI traffic management system

Sherwood hopes the system will eventually be used in concert with Las Vegas’s expanding network of self-driving cars.

This summer both Lyft and Aptiv announced they had conducted more than 50,000 self-driving car trips in Las Vegas.

Sherwood believes the imminent release of 5G mobile networks will further enhance the traffic management system.

‘5G will actually provide a more robust pipeline of data coming back where we might be able to take advantage of additional data streams,’ Sherwood said, ‘giving us more capability out of the same sensor box based on limitations that we might have today.’

WHAT ARE THE SIX LEVELS OF SELF-DRIVING AUTOMATION?

Level Zero – The full-time performance by the human driver of all aspects of the dynamic driving task, even when enhanced by warning or intervention systems.

Level One – A small amount of control is accomplished by the system such as adaptive braking if a car gets too close.

Level Two – The system can control the speed and direction of the car allowing the driver to take their hands off temporarily, but they have to monitor the road at all times and be ready to take over.

Level Three – The driver does not have to monitor the system at all times in some specific cases like on high ways but must be ready to resume control if the system requests.

Level Four – The system can cope will all situations automatically within defined use but it may not be able to cope will all weather or road conditions. System will rely on high definition mapping.

Level Five – Full automation. System can cope with all weather, traffic and lighting conditions. It can go anywhere, at any time in any conditions.

Tesla’s Model 3 Sedan – one of the world’s most advanced road-legal cars with autonomous elements – currently operates at Level Two autonomy. It is equipped for Level Three autonomy, which may be introduced in a future software update