Using GPS Mobile Phones as Traffic Sensors

Alexandre M. Bayen, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UC Berkeley

EXPERIMENT FACT SHEET

The convergence of communication and multi-media platforms has enabled a key capability: mobility tracking via GPS. Business plans of most major cellular phone manufacturers such as Nokia include embedding GPS in all manufactured cell phones within less than 18 months. Thus, a high penetration rate of GPS-equipped travelers on freeways is expected in the near future. This has major implications for the traffic engineering community, which currently monitors traffic using mostly fixed sensors such as cameras and loop detectors, or location specific sensors such as FasTrak or EZ-pass transponders.

This seminar will present a prototype of location-based service: real-time traffic monitoring using cellular phones only. The seminar will take place while the field experiment "Using GPS Mobile Phones as Traffic Sensors" is in progress: 100 vehicles carrying a GPS-equipped Nokia N95 cell phone will drive along a 10-mile stretch of I-880 between Hayward and Fremont, California.

Click here for a pdf version of the Mobile Century Guest program.

This event is sponsored by CITRIS, UC Berkeley, Nokia, CalTrans, the California Center for Innovative Transportation (CCIT), the Institute for Transportation Studies (ITS),