The ITS World Congress in Atlanta began today in earnest with a host of speakers and presentations, as well as a selection of off-site Tech Tours, offering firsthand experiences with cutting-edge transportation technologies in real-world settings across the greater Atlanta area.
One such tour highlighting Georgia’s technological leadership undertook a visit to the iATL (Infrastructure-Automotive Technology Laboratory) situated half an hour outside Atlanta in the town of Alpharetta. This offered an inside look at the world’s first private-sector connected vehicle lab, powered by Applied Information, and built to test and deploy real-world intelligent transportation solutions.
The event was opened by Bryan Mulligan, CEO of Applied Information, and mayor of Alpharetta Jim Gilvin, who praised the work done by the iATL in helping to save, “10,000 extra seconds” of time on the road for emergency services.
The indoor tour featured live views of select cities’ transportation infrastructure, including active traffic signals, school zone safety beacons, live transit signal priority and emergency vehicle preemption. Attendees were able to follow along with buses as they received priority on their normal routes, and see live counts of emergency vehicle preemptions and transit priority signal calls.
Participants in the roadway demonstrations experienced connected vehicle applications, including school zone safety alerts, school bus alerts and warnings, work truck alerts, pedestrian in crosswalk alerts, red light running warnings, and “get ready for green” notifications.
The tour also included the working lab, where industry experts work with every traffic signal controller in use in North America, multiple detectors including RADAR, LIDAR and cameras with extensive displays of artificial intelligence.