Newly Developed Wide-Area Traffic Simulator by Fujitsu

With an aim to create a comfortable and safer transportation system, Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a wide-area traffic simulator offering its users virtual driving experience, where the user can evaluate the effectiveness of traffic policies and discover problem areas from the actual driver’s perspective, helping to design appropriate traffic policies which are more in tune with traffic conditions. Through this development Fujitsu’s new system is able to simulate in real-time the detail behavior of tens of thousands of vehicles located across a wide area of roadway. The newly developed system generates 60 frames per second of video displaying the road from driver’s viewpoint. The new system splits up the wide region into multiple areas and calculates each of these areas in parallel. The system also performs the real-time calculation of on migration of vehicles across area of boundaries, as well as interaction between vehicles. The system is capable of computing driver behavior, route planning, driving operations and physical movement of vehicles all in real-time. This calculation is done based on a layered vehicle behavior computational model and changes the volume and frequency of calculations for each layer.
The company is planning to use the newly developed simulator for evaluating traffic guidance and other systems that employ traffic status sensing and telematic technologies. With all the available technologies such as Vehicle Information and Communication System (VICS), Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) and such measures as adjustments to highway toll fees and advanced notification of signal information and road pricing has yet to provide a sound solution in addressing road and driving safety. With nearly all major routes in Japan’s metropolitan cities facing around the clock congestion, changing traffic policies in accordance to the traffic behavior in designated areas is a step in a right direction. I hope the newly developed system can provide to traffic authorities sufficient insights that some of the policies that are being enforced are not effective. Having said this we the driving community can not simply close our eyes and expect the laws of the road will magically improve or ensure our driving safety. This is an individual effort based on common courtesy and sound judgment given the situation.

Posted in: automobile industery