(Yicai) Aug. 29 -- At a cost of CNY470 million (USD64.5 million), Xiangyang in central Hubei province has become the first Chinese city to have a traffic management system powered by artificial intelligence and internet of vehicles technologies.

“The system can accurately control the timing of traffic lights based on real-time traffic flow,” Yang Feng, a traffic police officer in Xiangyang, told Yicai. “While lights traditionally have a fixed time, the new system allows the side where more cars are detected to have longer green time.”

Xiangyang has installed the new system at 234 urban intersections covering 150 square kilometers, said Liu Kun, executive director at Hanjiang Zhixing Technology, the company that developed it. By the end of the year, the system will be in use at 448 intersections, spanning the entire downtown area, he added.

Also feeding into the IoV-powered system, Xiangyang has traffic police robots as well as cameras, radars, and other devices on 35 buses running on a fixed 10-kilometer road that is usually crowded.

With the help of roadside sensors, the buses are tracked, and the data are processed. The bus drivers then receive a speed range suggestion based on the real-time position of other vehicles, traffic info, and the status of traffic lights. With this IoV infrastructure and real-time guidance, the buses can travel on urban roads as smoothly as subways.

Xiangyang completed the intelligent transformation of its traffic information management system with the help of AI algorithms after taking full advantage of the original information control equipment, thereby saving on building costs.

“Our approach has provided third- and fourth-tier cities with a low-cost option to improve urban traffic efficiency immediately,” Liu noted.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione