Cubic, SWIM.AI expand TidalWave nationwide with deployments in nine cities

Cubic Transportation Systems’ (CTS) Trafficware and SWIM.AI have nationally expanded their joint service, TidalWave.

Introduced a year ago, TidalWave is a live traffic and traffic management information service powered by edge computing and machine learning.

Currently nine cities and counties use TidalWave including Las Vegas, Nev.; Palo Alto, Calif.; Greensboro, N. C.; Oklahoma City, Okla.; Jacksonville and Gainesville, Fla.; Norwalk, Conn.; Prince Georges County, Md.; and Clark County, Wash. More than a dozen other cities are also in the process of deploying TidalWave.

TidalWave provides delivery of high resolution and accurate live data for city intersections and traffic locations, delivering results in less than a second after the actual intersection changes. This immediacy enables optimal vehicle routing using actual intersection/light behavior and traffic locations, including forward predictions of future behavior.

“TidalWave was designed to address a variety of real-time traffic applications including connected vehicles, smart cities and Internet of Things (IoT) markets,” said Joe Custer, vice president and general manager of Trafficware, Cubic Transportation Systems. “The speed at which we capture and report traffic/intersection data is incredibly valuable to cities and counties, so it is gratifying to see it expand so rapidly.”

The SWIM technology stack that underpins the TidalWave service delivers traffic data processing in real-time, operating at a lower cost than traditional systems and delivering real-time information to city services and third-party applications.

To achieve high performance and low latency, the software locally analyzes data, creates live digital twins of every junction and reduces the raw data volumes by a factor of over 1,000. Performing analysis locally in the city (whether at the central ATMS or on controllers at street level) enables the system to achieve infrastructure cost savings. In addition, the service generates new revenues for the city by making data and insights commercially available in real-time to third parties such as navigation applications, vehicle owners, logistics businesses and connected cars.

TidalWave was designed using a software architecture that combines advanced traffic management technology, edge computing and instant local analytics to deliver real-time data and predictive machine learning for the connected vehicle, smart cities, smart intersections and the IoT markets.

“DataFabric can analyze, learn and predict in real-time, making TidalWave incredibly powerful and accurate,” said Ramana Jonnala, chief executive officer of SWIM.AI. “Its ability to work on existing hardware and deliver precise, granular traffic and intersection data instantly in some of the most congested, highly trafficked cities is extremely valuable.”

Most routing and logistics applications rely on historical cellular GPS data to measure roadway congestion and estimate travel times. In order to determine traffic congestion on arterial corridors, the applications assume that all cell phones are located in moving vehicles and reflect current conditions. The speed and accuracy with which the data is collected, analyzed and made available is significantly delayed and often does not reflect the actual experience of drivers, according to CTS.