Audi announces traffic light information system city rollouts

(Tech Xplore)—Your car performs the usual functions. Driving. Braking. Parking. Audi has another function you might want to use: "infrastructure service." Audi is helping you to say it even more easily. Audi calls it for short V2I.

Vehicle to infrastructure is to be offered as a service for traffic light information. Audi's announcement on Monday said this is a new traffic light information system that can communicate with municipal traffic signals.

It keeps the driver informed as to when traffic lights turn from red to green. As important, when the driver will be at a connected traffic light, the driver information system in the instrument cluster, and if it is equipped, a head-up-display, will indicate the time remaining until the signal changes to green.

Advantages to the system? Bill Howard in ExtremeTech said, "It lets you maximize the 15 to 120 seconds while you're stopped."

The system will be available on 2017 Audi Q7, A4 and A4 allroad models with Audi connect. You will start to hear more about it this fall. Here is the schedule:

"Audi of America will begin to roll out the new Traffic light information as part of its suite of Audi connect PRIME services later this fall in select smart cities and metropolitan areas across the country through 2017 and beyond. The feature is available on 2017 Audi Q7, A4 and A4 allroad models built after June 1st, 2016."

How it works: The car is getting its signal information from the advanced traffic management system that monitors traffic lights. The link between vehicle and infrastructure is routed via an on-board LTE data connection and servers.

According to ExtremeTech: "Audi says its technology partner, Traffic Technology Services, does the cat-herding job of aggregating and normalizing the real-time information on the status of each traffic light and how long until each goes green."

LTE stands for Long-Term Evolution, a standard for high-speed wireless communication for phones and data terminals.''

But how much of this infrastructure exists? Howard in ExtremeTech talked about traffic signals in the US and "Most are now internet-connected by virtue of being centrally controlled to help traffic flow. Tapping into the information from multiple data sources with different access protocols and making the information available in useful ways has been a challenge that's now on its way to being solved."

An Audi video said "City traffic lights today are often controlled by a central traffic control system. Starting in fall of 2016, Audi is partnering with providers to receive this data in select cities."

Pom Malhotra, General Manager, Connected Vehicles. "In the future we could envision this technology integrated into vehicle navigation, start / stop functionality and can even be used to help improve traffic flow in municipalities. These improvements could lead to better overall efficiency and shorter commuting times."

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