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New AI Algorithm Beats Even the World's Worst Traffic


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Only 10 percent of cars would have to be connected for it to work.

Computer scientists at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed an intelligent routing algorithm that attempts to minimize the occurrence of spontaneous traffic jams.

Credit: hfzimages/Shutterstock

Researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have developed an intelligent routing algorithm designed to minimize the occurrence of spontaneous traffic jams across a roadway network.

The fast, computationally distributed algorithm begins by assuming breakdowns will occur with enough traffic density.

"Our goal is to direct the traffic flow so that the overall traffic breakdown probability is minimized," write NTU's Hongliang Guo and colleagues. They say in another context, "our objective is to maximize the probability that none of the network links encounters a traffic breakdown."

The problem then becomes one handled by machine learning, which yields optimal routes through the network.

Guo's team has devised mathematical optimizations that make real-time calculation feasible, and they also demonstrated their algorithm in simulated situations. The researchers determined only 10 percent of cars in a network should be driving for those optimizations to have a positive effect on the network.

From Motherboard
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