PreVision

Signalized traffic data

YEAR

2019

DURATION

16 Weeks

Context

University

PreVision delinator and website landingpage

While more and more services and products for individual mobility are coming onto the market, the public infrastructure remains unchanged.

No system is currently experiencing such a significant and continuous disruption as that of mobility. New mobility concepts and constantly growing metropolises create new requirements that the automotive industry and city planning institutions need help solving. This project explores what crowd-sourced traffic routing could look like.

Map of Stuttgart (Germany) showing three levels of impact

Data collection areas for traffic management data

Better traffic managementrequires significant amounts of granular data. Who should provide and own it?

Screens of setting up a sensor and connecting the app to the kit

Step-by-step guides help with the assembly

A toolkit for the public

Currently, private mobility providers are taking the lead in traffic data collection. Our concept is based on a democratized solution for detecting traffic problems in urban areas with data collection. The simple sensor kit and the accompanying app enable everyone to collect traffic data.

Simple, modular hardware

All sensor kits are made of simple materials that users can find at any hardware store. No matter where they need to be placed, users can arrange the small-footprint technology to fit anywhere. All data can be read and shared via the app.

A hardware prototype that we placed on a busy road

Proof-of-concept hardware in the wild

Set-up of a DIY kit, data visualisation and a mock-up of a Google Maps integration

Visualized data from the PreVision toolkit

From data to action

The app helps to assemble and configure sensor kits. With the collected data, users can get traffic forecasts or use the data to drive policy decisions and urban planning. Later, data-driven reroutes could be integrated into navigation services.

The PreVision delinator

The delineator represents data-driven infrastructure beyond city limits. It detects approaching cars and signals the current traffic situation to the driver via light color and light rhythms.

The modular design covers many use cases: traffic jams and other danger spots, detours, construction sites, approaching emergency vehicles, and speed limits.

Delinator with glowing head or a smaller light behind the reflector

Two variations of the delineator hardware

We had to experiment a lot to find practical solutions on a concept and hardware level.

Through interviews with experts from the traffic control center in Stuttgart, we settled on our hardware feature set. Their input led us from a concept based on machine learning and video cameras to the modular sensor kit, which could collect way more reliable and relevant data.

We also did a small round of interviews with truck drivers to validate the delinator and its light rhythm features.

Inside the DIY kit with the base components

Drawing of a even more modular, stackable hardware

Technical drawing of sensor placement inside of the delinator

Me overviewing the user testing at Fraunhofer institute

Fraunhofer Usability Labs in Stuttgart invited us for professional user testing.

We had the pleasure of being given admission to the Fraunhofer institute's facilities by a professor from our university to conduct usability tests for our project. DIY Hardware kits are often too complicated to set up for amateurs. Therefore we wanted to validate if our approach was feasible.

The user tests we conducted focused on the step-by-step guide of the hardware set-up and installation. Later we translated these findings into improvements to the UI design.

Group work with Roman and Tobias.