SCSS Researchers Prof Vinny Cahill and Dr Ivana Dusparic have been awarded funding from the highly competitive and prestigious SFI Frontiers for the Future Awards programme (SFI FftF). Their project, ClearWay, will use artificial intelligence to explore and design traffic-management strategies to mitigate congestion and offer highly predictable travel times.

Offering predictable journey times is important to the uptake of sustainable road transportation including future public, shared, and on-demand mobility services and to on-time delivery of goods. Unpredictability arises partly from poor coordination between vehicles. ClearWay will exploit the increasing availability of sensor data including from connected and (semi-)autonomous vehicles to capture the detailed state of a road network in real time. The study will develop novel deep learning and artificial intelligence methods to design new approaches to traffic management.

SFI FftF programmes fund high-risk, high-reward projects with potential to deliver innovation and impact nationally and globally. In line with SFI`s research vision, ClearWay will inform future public traffic policy and contribute to Ireland’s economy by enabling new products and services for an international market.