NABI 60BRT

Commentary

Attentive readers of Modern Transportation World know by now that the NABI BRT60 buses that will run on the Los Angeles County Metro Rail Orange Line starting after Labor Day, 2005, can communicate in real time with the busway on which they will travel, arranging to prolong green lights or bring them up early as they approach, in order to facilitate their smooth and expeditious travel along their route.

Regular Modern Transportation World listeners also know that the calculations necessary to support these operations take place back at Metro Rail headquarters, where powerful computers, using specially-designed algorithms, crunch the wirelessly-incoming data and send out the signals necessary to program the traffic lights appropriately.

Avid fans of Etopia Media News Networks will also be aware that AeroScout in Northern California has developed a system of "enterprise visibility" that allows for the real-time monitoring of the location of 3D objects in physical space through the use of especially-powerful RFID tags and wireless networks, working as a "reverse GPS" system.

Combining the telemetric functionality of the AeroScout enterprise visibility solution with the telecommunications capability of the Orange Line buses and applying this technology to ALL mobile vehicles would, given a powerful enough wireless "cloud" and enough computing power, enable a "digital driving grid" that could monitor the real-time location of ALL cars and trucks, as well as buses, on the road.

Coupling such a network with the already-devised onboard systems to "auto-autopilot" vehicles in conjunction with RFID tags embedded in the roadway and visual computing systems for detecting and avoiding other vehicles would create a viable system for the computerized management of all vehicular traffic.

It would take a lot of computing power to run such a system. Fortunately, "grid computing" would allow for the aggregation and application of sufficient compute cycles to operate the digital driving grid.

Government and private companies should look into the possibilities of doing this.