Innovative products in road safety, traffic management and other categories selected as finalists for the Intertraffic Innovation Awards of 2016.
Fifteen finalists have been chosen in five categories out of a total of 91 entrants to this year’s Intertraffic Innovation Awards. The jury of five will examine each of the entrants and announce winners in each category along with the overall winner at the opening ceremony of the Intertraffic Amsterdam 2016 event which will take place on 5th April 2016 at RAI Amsterdam. The award categories are Infrastructure, Traffic Management, Safety, Parking and Smart mobility.
Infrastructure
In the Infrastructure category, the finalists are Silca Traffic Systems for a compact solar-powered LED highway light for illuminating road works, Aisico for a software product that enables automatic high speed classification of road surfaces to identify and analyse defects and degradation and HR Groep for a smart sensor embedded and illuminating foil for signage.
Commenting on the category, jury member Colin Sowman of ITS International said, “This year’s entries not only include innovations enabling existing tasks to be undertaken more efficiently and with a greater environmental focus, but also some offering radically different ways of traffic and infrastructure management.”
Traffic Management
Finalists short-listed for their traffic management related products include Houston Radar for a dual beam, ultra low power, side fire radar for the accurate detectection of lane, speed and vehicle classification, APM PRO for a multimodal system to supply real-time travel time, average section speed and traffic data and Ortana for an overhead system comprising multiple sensors for road condition analysis.
Jury member Tom Stone of Traffic Technology International commented on the large number of entries received in the Traffic Management section, saying: “The traffic management entries this year reflect the vast amount of innovation in a host of technologies including Bluetooth sensors and Lidar cameras.”
Safety
The safety category had some very strong nominees from which the three finalists were chosen, including EBO van Weel for a vehicle mounted Variable Message Sign to improve safety for maintenance and engineering staff in road works, Safer Place for a video-based modular platform for the detection and enforcement of high-risk traffic violations and WheelRight for the Drive-Through Tyre Management system for measuring tyre pressure, vehicle weight and tread depth around the circumference of the tyres as the vehicle drives over road mounted sensors.
Commenting on the 30 entries in the safety category this year, Jury chairman Dr Peter van der Knaap of the Dutch Institute for Road Safety Research said, “Apart from innovations in products that are there to improve the safety of the road user, several entries this year seek to improve the safety of road construction and emergency workers, reflecting the interest in preventing often serious incidents in this area.”
Parking
Shortlisted companies in the parking category include Park Assist for a camera based smart sensor system which puts processing intelligence right at the parking-space level, HR Groep a multi-layer bicycle parking system and Parkmobile for a system that enables motorists to check parking space availability in central London, directly navigate towards a space and pay for it.
Jury member Peter Martens of the European Parking Association (EPA) said “Proper parking management and customer information help cities to reduce car traffic in central areas and to achieve environmental targets while keeping the city alive and many of this year’s entries are supportive of those policies.”
Smart Mobility
Finalists in the smart mobility category include Parkmobile Group for a dasboard based system for parking slot location, reservation and payment, Cross Zlín for a data aggregation, monitoring, visualisation and integration platform for smart city and ITS projects and Siemens for a smartphone app based infrastructure free bicycle prioritisation system for light controlled intersections.
Commenting on entrants to the smart mobility category, Dr Ben Rutten of Eindhoven University of Technology said, “There were several entries in the IoT (Internet of Things) area, reflecting the interest in taking ITS to the next level of automation and scaling opportunities like we know from the Internet world.”
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