For all the attention devoted to self-driving cars, there's another, often-overlooked, aspect to transportation efficiency and safety: smarter roads.
Derq, a startup operating out of Detroit and Dubai, has developed an AI system that can be installed on intersections and highways. Its AI edge appliance uses NVIDIA GPUs to process video and other data from cameras and radars to predict crashes before they happen and to warn connected road users. It can also understand roadways better, with applications ranging from accurate traffic counts to predicting spots on roads that are most prone to crashes.
Derq CEO and co-founder Georges Aoude says his fascination with automotive safety systems stretches back to long weekend drives with his family to visit relatives. He'd wonder why these fast-moving hunks of metal didn't collide more often.
Time revealed to him that vehicles frequently do, sometimes to deadly effect. In fact, 1.35 million people around the globe perish in auto accidents every year, and millions more are seriously injured.
Many of our team members have been touched by deadly road crashes, said Aoude, who himself has lost two relatives on the roads. This only makes us more determined to get our technology out there to make roadways safer for all.
As a scholar at MIT, Aoude worked on autonomous satellites and then drone safety, before doing his Ph.D. work on autonomous vehicles. During his graduate work, he began to envision smart cities that work in tandem with autonomous vehicles, and the seed for Derq was planted. Along the way, he received a patent for AI systems that can predict dangerous behaviors.
Dissecting an Intersection For its initial use case, Derq zeroed in on intersection and pedestrian safety. It chose to test its technology at a busy downtown street crossing considered one of Detroit's most dangerous. The intersection had no cameras or radars, so Derq procured those and began its monitoring work.
For the past three years, it's been capturing and training footage of tens of thousands of vehicles and road users a day, 24/7, at that intersection. In addition to predicted red-light violations and dangerous pedestrian movements, the company has been using that data to refine its AI models. As it monitors more intersections and roadways, Derq is constantly expanding its models. All data is anonymized, and no personal information from road users is ever collected or stored.
Those models can determine which actions have the potential to cause crashes and which don't, and Derq strives for over 95 percent accuracy. Incidents considered high risk are uploaded to Derq's GPU cloud instance for further analysis and documentation. Eventually, the system will be able to notify connected and autonomous cars and warn them of impending dangers.
If the driver detects someone is running a red light, that's too late, Aoude said. If you tell the driver two seconds in advance, they now have the chance to react and avoid the collision.
The Detroit test demonstrated that the system was able to identify potential crashes effectively. Having seen the technology, the Michigan Department of Transportation has expanded its engagement with Derq, which was recently awarded a federal project to deploy its technology at 65 key intersections along 25 miles of connected roads in the Motor City.
Derq has also been deploying its technology in Dublin, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, and in Las Vegas, and is running a pilot with California Department of Transportation. It's in discussions with cities in Florida and Texas, as well as in Canada. Further afield, it's deployed its systems in Dubai and is working with the road and transport agency there on expanding that deployment as well.
Choosing the Right GPU Derq's edge units are equipped with NVIDIA GPUs and hardware acceleration that enable them to process large amounts of internet of things data in real time. It's developing for a variety of GPUs, including the NVIDIA RTX, T4, and Jetson Nano, AGX Xavier and TX2.
But GPUs are just one part of Derq's relationship with NVIDIA. As a member of the NVIDIA Inception program for AI startups, Aoude said Derq has had an Inception team visit the company's Dubai office to provide support such as how to optimize their use of GPUs. They're also in the process of being incorporated into the NVIDIA Metropolis smart spaces AI platform, which Aoude said will be a great platform to help us scale.
The company has focused its product on two main unit sizes. A basic unit runs a single application - think of a box that's deployed at a pedestrian crosswalk - a perfect pairing for a Jetson AGX Xavier. More elaborate boxes, which run more apps on more camera streams at complex and busy intersections, will rely on the more powerful NVIDIA T4 or RTX GPUs.
Derq will also provide traffic planners and engineers with valuable statistics and intelligence, such as real-time graphs, incident notifications and heatmaps, that can help them assess and improve road safety. The system also can provide forensics for government agencies and insurance companies investigating crashes, an area that the company is exploring with insurance providers.
Going forward, Aoude said Derq plans to scale quickly through partnerships with cities, smart infrastructure, and autonomous vehicle firms so that it can get its technology deployed as widely as possible before autonomous vehicles hit the roadways in large numbers.
We can't do it on our own, he said. We need forward-thinking cities and collaborative partners, and get ready to scale deployments together, to achieve vision zero - eliminating all road fatalities.
Most recent headlines
04/08/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, is excited to announce Santiago Solanas as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO)....
03/06/2024
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, a...
05/05/2024
A special evening performance by multiplatinum singer Becky G will provide a memorable conclusion to TeievisaUnivision's Casa Cultura upfront event on May 1...
05/05/2024
Giant media buyer Publicis is telling network sales executives that it does not think Nielsen's new panel-plus-big-data currency is ready for this upfront....
05/05/2024
WASHINGTON Glenn Kirschner, legal analyst at NBC News, blasted the media for referring to the New York trial of former President Donald Trump as a hush-money ...
05/05/2024
Catchy Comedy's weekend marathon sees The Beverly Hillbillies on the weekend of May 4-5. The event kicks off Saturday, May 4 at 11 a.m. ET, and runs through...
05/05/2024
NBC Sports has the 150th Kentucky Derby Saturday, May 4. The coverage begins at 2:30 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock and the feature race at Churchill Downs in Louis...
04/05/2024
NEW YORK As the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month kicks off in May, Nielsen has released an extensive new report diving into their media habits with data sh...
04/05/2024
PHILADELPHIA As National Military Appreciation Month gets underway, Comcast has announced several new initiatives to help veterans, service members, and their f...
04/05/2024
WASHINGTON, D.C. Federal Communications Commission chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has announced a tentative agenda for the May Open Commission Meeting scheduled...
04/05/2024
The Broadband Forum has announced major enhancements to key 5G convergence standards that the group said will help advance next-generation applications, improve...
04/05/2024
Spotify Wrapped Campaign Spot Graded With DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 3, 2024
0 Comments
Blackmagic Design today announced that Colorist M...
04/05/2024
Three Boston Conservatory at Berklee Alums Nominated for Tony Awards An additional eight alums and two current students performed in nominated productions.
...
03/05/2024
An innovative learning tool to help media and civil society better understand ho...
03/05/2024
PARK CITY, UTAH - JANUARY 21: (L-R) Actors K stutis Cic nas and Greta Grinevi i t , Director Marija Kavtaradze and Producer Marija Razgute attend the 2023 Sunda...
03/05/2024
If you aren't familiar with Danny Ocean's music, it's only a matter ...
03/05/2024
Spotify has an unwavering commitment to supporting emerging artists across all genres, to helping them launch and thrive in their careers, and to connecting the...
03/05/2024
Como uno de los sonidos de mayor expansi n en el mundo, la M sica Mexicana va m ...
03/05/2024
As one of the fastest-growing sounds worldwide, M sica Mexicana is more than jus...
03/05/2024
NEW YORK FuboTV reported that it lost 110,000 subs in Q1 2024 but it exceeded its guidance for the quarter with double digit year-over-year increases across key...
03/05/2024
Only 3 Weeks Left To Enter The Creative Industries Most Award
Brie Clayton May 3, 2024
0 Comments
Creativepool is giving a last call to the creative i...
03/05/2024
WePlay Studios Transforms the Future of Live Event Storytelling with AJA Gear
Brie Clayton May 3, 2024
0 Comments
By 2032, the esports market is expec...
03/05/2024
WASHINGTON Shannon Bream, Fox News Sunday anchor and chief legal correspondent, sat for a keynote chat at The Business of TV News, with Tom Umstead, senior co...
03/05/2024
WASHINGTON Asked how important is local news, Martha Raddatz, who has covered foreign conflicts for decades and moderated presidential debates for ABC News, s...
03/05/2024
Sony Pictures and Apollo Global Management have made a $26 billion cash offer fo...
03/05/2024
CBS announced its 2024-2025 primetime schedule, which features the new dramas NCIS: Origins, Matlock and Watson, and new comedies Poppa's House and Georgie ...
03/05/2024
Sports-focused streaming service Fubo said it reduced its red ink in the first quarter, despite losing 110,000 subscribers since the end of the year....
03/05/2024
Walmart is reportedly about to release a new 4K streaming box/smart speaker hybrid device for Google TV that could retail for as low as $50, according to a repo...
03/05/2024
Enhancements to its Delivery Workspace solution provide increased content delivery robustness and security
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: May 3, 2024
Enha...
03/05/2024
According to reports, if the bid is successful, Sony would be the significant majority shareholder of the new private company
By Jenny Priestley
Published: M...
03/05/2024
Located in Manchesters Spinningfields district, the course aims to equip students with the skills, knowledge and industry insight for a career in the creative s...
03/05/2024
Lightbridge has created a new Cine Reflect Lighting System kit, dedicated to enabling artistic lighting with consideration of today's productivity practical...
03/05/2024
Broadcast media systems integrator BeckTV and Lawo worked together on a large-scale AES67 build of radio control rooms at KPBS, San Diego's NPR and PBS memb...
03/05/2024
Raleigh, NC, April 12, 2024 SmallHD announces PageOS 6, a powerful software update free for owners of SmallHD monitors, featuring increased functionality, exp...
03/05/2024
SmallHD announces the Quantum 32 a new 31.5 OLED monitor designed to provide reference HDR/SDR images for post-production final color grading, as well as cri...
03/05/2024
By 2032, the esports market is expected to grow to $9.29 billion, bolstered by a global player count and fan following that both continue to climb. The 2023 Lea...
03/05/2024
Amagi, the global leader in cloud-based SaaS technology for broadcast and connected TV (CTV), today announced that the 11th edition of the Amagi Global FAST Rep...
03/05/2024
Riedel Communications today announced that Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) is relying on a media and intercom network based on Riedel technology for the renewal of...
03/05/2024
Broadpeak , a leading provider of content delivery network (CDN) and video streaming solutions for content providers and pay-TV operators worldwide, announced t...
03/05/2024
Media technology innovator Limecraft will exhibit the latest updates to its online platform on stand G79 at the 15-16 May 2024 Media Production & Technology Sho...
03/05/2024
Audio interface specialist Prism Sound is partnering with console manufacturer Solid State Logic, professional monitor manufacturer PMC and acoustic panel and d...
03/05/2024
Intinor, Sweden's leading developer of products and solutions for high-quality video over the internet, is set to join forces with its UK partner Zest Techn...
03/05/2024
NAKIVO Inc., a fast-growing software company dedicated to protecting physical, virtual, cloud, and SaaS environments, announced its Q1 2024 financial results to...
03/05/2024
Hiltron Communications announces an addition to its range of satellite communication products and systems: a field-upgradable motorisation kit specifically desi...
03/05/2024
Visit LiveU at Stand D30
With this year an exceptional one for major sporting events alongside multiple, key elections, the power and flexibility of LiveU'...
03/05/2024
Agile Content, the leader in the development of technology and solutions for the provision of television services over the Internet, announces Koldo Unanue as i...
03/05/2024
Eight co-signers representing streaming services, pay TV operators and public interest groups have sent a letter to Congressional leaders urging their Committee...
03/05/2024
BOSTON Brightcove has announced that it has implemented Amazon Q Business, a new generative AI assistant on Amazon Web Services (AWS)....
03/05/2024
NEW YORK CBS has declared that it will finish the 2023-24 season as Americas Most-Watched Network in primetime for the 16th consecutive season....
For all the attention devoted to self-driving cars, there's another, often-overlooked, aspect to transportation efficiency and safety: smarter roads.
