Life is a journey that must be travelled, no matter how bad the roads or accommodations.’
– Oliver Goldsmith, 1764.
In the automotive industry, all eyes are currently focused on the autonomous vehicle, and, particularly following recent events, the necessity to ensure that self-driving cars represent the safest way to travel for consumers worldwide. As detailed in our last blog post, there are emerging technologies and developments in use right now that enable us to maximise the potential of our vehicles in the meantime, especially as a world where self-driving cars can be safely deployed on our roads would seem to be quite a distant reality at the moment.
As well as being the trusted connectivity partners for Smart Vehicles such as the Fujitsu Connected Van, Arkessa is proud to be the provider of seamless mobile connectivity for Iknaia’s journey time monitoring solution, Airscan. Airscan enables organisations such as Highways Agencies, Highways Maintenance and Infrastructure companies, as well as the Emergency Services, to monitor journey times on diversion routes, around road closures and incidents or accidents in order to make decisions regarding traffic rerouting or emergency routes.
Iknaia’s founder, Julia McNally describes the solution;
“The Airscan system is able to identify, in real time, incidents that impact on journey time reliability, and what’s more it is portable and easy to install. Using the online self-service dashboard you can control all your units in one place and view real-time reporting. Data can also be exported and fully integrated into existing monitoring applications.”
Transport and highways agencies are faced with the huge challenge of keeping traffic flowing across the UK, while the number of cars on the road is going up, (31.7 million in 2016). With voices in the press suggesting radical proposals such as making sections of the M25 around London ‘double decker’, the Airscan solution is a refreshingly simple one. Using seamless mobile connectivity via 3G or 4G from Arkessa, Airscan units can work independently of any networking installation, and an internal battery pack lasting up to 11 hours makes the units ideal for use in ‘pop-up’ installations. Data collected by the units is pushed to the cloud using the Arkessa connectivity solution and is presented in a dashboard format, optimised for PC and mobile devices.
Solutions such as Iknaia’s Airscan enable agencies and organisations responsible for traffic management to maximise the potential provided by the IoT. It is highly feasible that the Smart Cities of the future will utilise these kinds of solutions to improve driver and roadworker safety, reduce travel times for passengers, and allow for freeflow of traffic as much as possible. We are delighted to be involved in enabling the Airscan solution, and for all of us, the prospect of sitting in fewer traffic jams is certainly something to celebrate.