Traffic? Accidents? We have a solution! No traffic lights! No jams! No accidents!
How comes? Simple! Simple? Well... Not so simple in fact. Look:
 | Assume all the cars in a city are equipped by a GPS and a cellular connection. |
| This implies that every car knows its own coordinates and can transmit them to a Traffic Control Center (TCC). |
| This implies that the TCC knows coordinates of all the cars in the city. |
So what? The TCC can advise the drivers personally (by the cellular line) which roads to choose in order to avoid jams.
But what about the accidents? No problem! If the TCC knows the location of each car at any time point, what do we need drivers for?! Let the TCC drive the cars!
Wait, how would it work? This way:
| Mr. Smith enters his Mercedes. It has no steering wheel and no pedals. Instead, it has a touchable display with the city map on it. |
| Mr. Smith marks the destination of his journey. This data is sent to the TCC. |
| There is a main computer in the TCC that receives the data sent by Mr. Smith's Mercedes. |
| Meanwhile, the main computer stores the following data about each car in the city: its destination, its current coordinates and its speed. Namely, it can compute the coordinates of each car at any time point from now till its arrival. |
| The main computer can prescribe Mr. Smith's Mercedes its rout so that it won't intersect a rout of any other car at any time point while it is on the road. |
| This rout is sent to Mr. Smith's Mercedes. And - to his wonder - the car starts running to the destination. Without his involvement, under full control of the TCC. |
| During the driving, the car frequently computes its own coordinates and sends them to the main computer which compares them with the prescribed ones and stops the car if any discrepancy is registered. |
Futuristic? Impossible? Maybe... Yes, it is for now. But isn't it a nice model? Just imagine you're Mr. Smith:
We have implemented this model on a 3D image (courtesy Vladimir Averboukh) of our lovely city of Haifa. The implementation is in C++ using DirectX 7.0 SDK.
Do you want to play with our demo? Please download it (after unzipping it, just double-click on Setup.exe):
| City.zip (21.1 Mb, sorry the 3D image is heavy...) |
Do you want to read more about the idea? Please look here:
| City.doc (295 Kb, it's in Hebrew, I will translate it in the future) |
Do you want to receive more implementation details? Please read this:
| City_imp.doc (110 Kb, English) |
Do you want to ask any question? Please ask!