Another RI Spinoff, Roadbotics, Earns Runner-up Prize.
The Surtrac intelligent traffic signaling system developed by the Robotics Institute and spun off as Rapid Flow Technologies is the winner of the Smart Cities Global Innovation Award for Mobility organized by France’s Le Monde newspaper.
The leader of the Surtrac project, Stephen Smith, research professor of robotics, will accept the award at a ceremony in Singapore June 2. The ceremony is part of a Smart Cities conference organized by Le Monde, Business France and the Straits Times, Singapore’s most-read English language newspaper, at the National University of Singapore.
The Surtrac system employs artificial intelligence to coordinate traffic lights at a number of Pittsburgh intersections based on actual traffic conditions, thus improving traffic flow, reducing average travel time by 25 percent and cutting air pollution by 20 percent.
A system that uses cameras mounted on garbage trucks to routinely monitor road and infrastructure conditions, developed by Christoph Mertz, principal project scientist in the Robotics Institute, received first runner-up recognition in the Urban Innovation category of the contest. This technology has been spun off as RoadBotics.
Winners in the contest’s seven categories were selected from over 200 nominations from five continents by an international jury of 17 city planners, sociologists, journalists, and innovation experts. More information on the winners is available at Le Monde.