A few weeks ago there was a discussion about the use of mobile phones to detect traffic movement in urban areas.
Someone asked how the system differentiated between cars and pedestrians and as far as I can remember there was no answer given.
I was at a meeting last night where one of the contributors is an advisor to the Higways Agency and I asked the above question.
It seems that sophisticated mathematical pattern and movement recognition algorithms are used to classify the various phone user types.
So now you know!
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TomTom are working with TomTom on this. I too wondered how they tell the difference between a phone that is in a car that is stuck in traffic and another that is simply in a pocket.
TomTom are moving forward with their so called Traffic HD service in some countries using Vodafone data.
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I work with the two main suppliers of the systems used - TomTom bought a company in Edinburgh called Applied Dynamics, and they are using that company's system to produce the HD traffic service using Vodafone's anonymous data feed. The UK service will be launched in June/July 2008, as a TomTom badged product/service - Vodafone won't be on the marketing material.
The other main supplier is Intellione - based in Atlanta (www.intellione.com) and they have a system up and running with the Canadian operator Rogers Wireless. You can see a live demo at demo.intellione.com/intellione/traffic_tampa.jsp
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I wonder if TomTom traffic subscribers will get the HD version too... but then how could they have a two tier system? Current TomTom traffic is reasonably good IMHO.
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I remember when TomTom was Palmtop :-) They had an application that ran on the Psion 5 called TomTom for satnav. This was around 9-10 years ago. Someone from Psion then went to work at Palmtop (he's the rich CEO I think) and the rest is history. I remember contemplating getting TomTom for the Psion 5 I had at the time.
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The real irony is that TomTom almost never happened. The company that built it was struggling to sell a related product in mapping/GIS to government and corporates. They were losing money and realised they had the bones of the TomTom product, so gave it a go. If they'd been successful with the main product they'd never have made TomTom, or the money they've made since....
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