ICL expert Vladimir Kayurov spoke about the development of ITS business line in the company and told about ITS solutions ICL can offer its customers today.
Implementation of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is a complicated task that requires good IT expertise, a serious administrative resource and of course courage to implement brand new ideas and innovative technology. At present, ICL Group develops digital solutions for transportation infrastructure, implements joint projects with its partners and integrates the existing ITS solutions. Vladimir Kayurov is an ICL expert and service owner. In his interview, he spoke about the development of ITS business line in ICL and about products and solutions that are available to our customers today.
— Vladimir, tell us about the development of ITS business line in ICL Group.
Availability, speed, convenience and mobility are the key requirements that define the level of economic development of any country. And today these requirements are applied to all spheres of life. In transportation, these requirements can be put into action by using ITS, in particular by integrating state-of-the-art digital technologies in transportation infrastructure.
To explore possibilities and potential lines of development in this field, we did market analysis, analysed ITS technologies, learned about government strategies related to transportation industry development and studied various concepts of ITS systems implementation. For example, in the course of the industry analysis, while studying ITS development trends and matching them to experience of ICL Group in machine learning and neural network development, we had an idea to create a video analytics system for road infrastructure facilities based on neural networks.
First, we tried out this idea. To do that, we established connections with three government customers that manage road infrastructure facilities. Secondly, we developed the system prototypes. When developing these prototypes, we took into account long-term and ambitious objectives set by the RF regions and focused on using Russian software and AI technology. To verify importance and applicability of this product, our experts delivered a report at the ITS section within the framework of a digital forum Kazan Digital Week and received a lot of positive feedback from the participants of the event and also from moderator of the ITS section Sultan Zhankaziev, President of the Association of Traffic Engineers.
— What solutions presented at the digital forum are you talking about?
We showcased computer vision and video analytics solutions based on neural networks which we are ready to offer to our customers today. Among them are such innovative solutions as:
Open Manholes solution helps to control the current status of manholes on the road, identify open manholes captured by cameras, check their location against the road map and notify the customer.
Road Defect Detection and Classification solution makes it possible to automate detection of road defects, regularly scan roads for potholes, cracks and other defects, automate the manual process of road defect scanning and detection, and send notifications of the detected defects to the appropriate services and departments. This solution is similar to the previous one, however there is an important difference: the manholes can have object ID whereas defects can’t be predicted and just happen haphazardly, nonetheless they need detection, classification and proper response.
Out-of-service Lamp Post Detection solution makes it possible to control road lighting, detect out-of-service street lamp posts, check them against the road map and notify the customer to ensure timely response.
Road Sign Monitoring solution is used to keep track of the existing road signs and to detect their absence. We can check the received data against the road map and send notifications in case of discrepancies. The advantage of this solution is that it can detect the missing road signs based on the available data.
As there are lots of objects and facilities on the roads, to implement all the abovementioned solutions we apply a complicated geolocation system for road infrastructure management. This solution makes it possible to get precise geolocation data for the object and automatically check it against the road map or the existing database. The event data can be displayed on the interactive map and immediately sent to the appropriate services and departments via the chosen communication line including Email, Telegram messenger or any other convenient platform.
— What’s the potential of video analytics projects?
The video analytics solution for road infrastructure management developed by ICL helps to automate and digitalize manual processes, improve the detection time for road defects, open manholes, missing road signs and out-of-service street lamps. As a result, you can always be one step ahead of the problem and prevent car crashes and collisions and other serious accidents on the roads.
All our products and solutions have huge potential because they all offer significant advantages. First, you don’t need special technical tools or hardware to capture data and analyse the road traffic. Any video can be used including videos made by customer’s dashcam, in mobile laboratory or by socially responsible citizens. Secondly, the project can be customized. Thirdly, the solution can be scaled and can work in various environments from low-end smartphones up to special-purpose hardware and cloud computing solutions. Apart from that, the product development plan envisages creation of a single integration platform or integration of software modules into customer’s existing platform.
— How do your solutions work?
All video analytics solutions are built in the same way and run as follows: initial video processing, object detection, tracking, receiving geolocation data, and sending notifications of the detected or unfound objects in accordance with the case. Then the customer will take further actions as appropriate: change the manhole, put up a road sign, etc.
— Video analytics projects are only a part of the large amount of work ICL Group is doing in the field of ITS. Tell me about the other solutions you are ready to offer and to implement together with your customers.
We have developed typed ITS solutions which as a system integrator we can easily implement in any region, group of regions or any separate company.
Our latest IT solutions include automated traffic control systems (ATCS and traffic control centers), photo and video recording systems to control traffic violations, hardware and software appliances for weight checking stations, parking management systems and many others.
To improve public transport, the intelligence public transportation systems can be used including road user alert system and road network digital twin system which makes it possible to create highly accurate digital copy of road network. We can also offer transportation planning and modeling systems to visualize traffic flows and to optimize road traffic management.
— How do you plan to continue your work?
At present we plan to put together universal solutions for intelligent transportation systems, work with ITS hardware market leaders and develop our own products in cooperation with our strategic partner PJSC VimpelCom.
— Thank you for the interview!
