Tomtom One Camera Alerts Not Working

How a smartphone camera can cut fuel costs 20% at rush hour

Mount your smartphone in the dash of your car and it could join a network of smartphones that watch traffic lights and tell you how fast to drive to get to the next traffic light without wasting gas. Researchers from MIT and Princeton say the technology, called SignalGuru, helped drivers cut fuel consumption by 20% in tests done in Cambridge, Mass. The see-all cameras could also note fuel prices and available parking spaces or, who knows, who’s looking hot in lines outside crowded clubs.

SignalGuru plays off the increasing number of drivers who buy a windshield-mount bracket for their smartphones . The brackets typically allow the smartphone’s back-side camera, now facing forward, to get a wide view of the road ahead, and they have enough resolution to see traffic lights and roadside signs. Software linked to the smartphones recognizes traffic lights and reports back their status and location. Based on reports from other cameras, SignalGuru tells the motorist how fast to arrive at the next light as it turns green.

The researchers also tested the camera in Singapore, where the duration of traffic lights is already paced to traffic flow, so you’ve got two smart systems dueling. In Cambridge with dumb (fixed-duration) traffic lights, SignalGuru could predict the timing of the next light with an error of two-thirds of a second. In Singapore, the error increased to just over one second, and two seconds in a densely populated area. But even with an accuracy of two and a half seconds (early or late to the next signal), says Emmanouil Koukoumidis, a visiting researcher at MIT from Princeton who led the project, “[SignalGuru] could very well help you avoid stopping at an intersection.” A traffic signal typically runs 20 to 30 seconds.

In the SignalGuru research project, feedback to drivers came via prompts on the smartphone displays. In a commercial application, it might be audio prompts, Koukoumidis says. Or not if they get feedback from real-world drivers, who often dislike being told how to drive when others are in the car and can hear the instructions. The MIT-Princeton crew modeled the effect of telling motorists to speed up as well as maintain speed or slow down to catch the next light, but “we think this application [go faster] is not a safe thing to have.” Merely the way a lot of people drive when they see a light turn yellow. In Europe, automakers even use the lane departure warning camera to read speed limit signs and construction warnings. They say the variability of US traffic signs from state to state makes it too difficult. (Like a sign reading “Speed Limit 65 Trucks 55″ is difficult?

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