Meet Google’s Project Green Light – Using AI To Tackle Traffic

Google’s research team is working on a new system called Project Green Light. The new system aims to reduce vehicle emissions and wait times at traffic signals. The system leverages AI to analyze traffic patterns and uses data from Google Maps and other sources. Currently, Project Green Light is being tested in Bengaluru and several other cities around the world. What makes this project interesting? We will discuss the details in this article.

Google Project Green Light: Explaining the New Technology

Google’s Project Green Light uses AI to improve city traffic. It aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are high when cars idle at traffic lights. The system also helps to shorten wait times at signals.

Google has two approaches to improving city traffic management. The first is installing hardware at each intersection to monitor traffic and adjust signals in real time. This method works well in some Western countries but is expensive to install and maintain.

Project Green Light solves this issue using AI and software. Google analyzes traffic patterns, average signal wait times, and traffic hotspots at different times of the day to create a detailed traffic flow model. AI then processes this data to optimize traffic management.

Google shares this information with local traffic authorities, enabling them to adjust signal timings dynamically. This approach is cost-effective and can be implemented quickly, in about five minutes, compared to the high costs and complexity of hardware-based solutions.

An AI Model Developed to Measure How Traffic Flows

The Green Light team used Google Maps’ driving trends to create an AI model that measures how traffic flows through an intersection, including patterns of starting and stopping, average wait times at a traffic light, and coordination between adjacent intersections. The model identifies possible ways to improve. Things like shaving off several seconds from a red traffic light during off-peak hours or a way to coordinate between intersections that aren’t yet synced. The city’s engineers then review the info and can implement them in as little as five minutes.

“In order to achieve a positive climate impact, we want to be able to deploy high-quality Green Light recommendations to many cities globally and scale fast. So we purposely set up everything to be simple and lightweight — cities don’t need to invest in any dedicated software or hardware integrations,” says Green Light Program Manager Alon Harris. “We just share our recommendations with the city, and then they evaluate them and take action.”

Since their first pilot in 2021, the team has tested more and more intersections, developed more accurate predictions, and taken Green Light on the road to more than a dozen cities across the world, including Rio de Janeiro, Seattle, Bengaluru, and most recently, Boston. The team also developed a comprehensive dashboard to easily share recommendations and analytics with partner cities, while continuing to monitor for any new needed changes.

Project Green Light is Being Tested in Multiple Cities Across the World

Project Green Light is currently being tested in Bengaluru, Kolkata, Manchester, Rio de Janeiro, Seattle, and Boston. The system includes a dashboard that displays traffic flows and trends across all intersections in a city.

“We offer each city dedicated reports with readable impact metrics. These include things like for example: how many stops drivers saved at an intersection over time. We think that’s going to be a real incentive to not just implement the first recommendations. It will also bring Green Light to more intersections,” Alon says.

Google claims that Project Green Light can reduce greenhouse gas emissions at traffic signals by up to 10%. It can also improve traffic flow by up to 30% in cities. Additionally, drivers can expect shorter wait times at traffic signals. The system optimizes traffic flow during non-peak hours when roads are less congested.

The Project Will Soon Reach Other Cities

Google is preparing to expand Project Green Light to multiple cities worldwide. A waitlist has been set up on the company’s official website for traffic engineers and government officials interested in participating.

Vineet Kumar Goyal, Commissioner of Kolkata Police, reports that Project Green Light has been deployed at 13 intersections in Kolkata. The system has effectively reduced traffic congestion and prevented gridlock. Feedback from commuters has been positive, with noticeable improvements in traffic flow at some busy intersections.

Similarly, Project Green Light has received favorable feedback from traffic departments in Manchester (England) and Haifa (Israel).

Conclusion

The team is working to scale Green Light to hundreds of cities and tens of thousands of intersections in the next few years. According to Google, on that road to making the world a little better, they hope helping people experience less stop-and-go traffic will spread some joy along the way.

“You know when you drive through a sequence of five green lights, and it feels like your lucky day?” Dotan says. “We want to make that feeling more common to more people around the world.”

This certainly is a good example of how AI tech can simply revolutionize the world we live in. This technology is set to go really beyond generative language models. We are truly excited to see what they will be able to achieve in the future. The Green Light Project is just another good example of how AI can improve things for users.