PHX Reporter

The city's Street Transportation Department partnered with Arizona State University's Argos Vision tech startup, which is developing "smart" traffic cameras, according to a press release.

These cameras would "passively capture, analyze and deliver droves of data" to improve safety. Argos Vision cameras will be installed in some Phoenix locations for a one-year pilot program.

“We identified three major things we wanted to accomplish with this technology: cost reduction, privacy protection and rich metadata extraction," Argos Vision co-founder Mohammad Farhadi said. 

He went into more detail about what kind of data he wanted to capture.

“We want to extract rich data that meets not only the minimum desire of cities, such as vehicle counting but data that can be used in the future as well,” Farhadj said in a press release.

He also discussed the specific benefits.

“At that location, a city might elect to reinforce a road so they don’t have to replace it every year,” he said.

Farhadi believes his new technology suits the nature of traffic.

“This doesn’t give you a clear picture, because these are snapshots of data. Traffic has a dynamic nature,” he said. “The beauty of using a computer vision–based system like ours is that it gives cities a permanent, precise flow of information.”

Other founders of the company are also confident in the merits of their data.

“We can provide autonomous vehicles with situational awareness of other vehicles or pedestrians outside the scope of their on-board sensors,” co-founder Yezhou Yang said. “Also, our rich metadata could help local authorities measure how safe the AVs are while operating on public roads.”

Farhadi also hopes his technology will combat pedestrian fatalities. 

“Pedestrians are a big factor in street traffic,” he said. “Arizona has one of the highest pedestrian fatality rates, and we want to understand why that is happening and how to prevent it.”

Traffic officials are also pleased with that element of the technology.

“Say there's a close call, where a vehicle crosses the path of a pedestrian. We can identify these conflict hotspots,” Simon T. Ramos, a traffic management and operations engineer in the Phoenix Street Transportation Department, said.

Ramos made sure to reiterate that the city was all-in on the technology as a financial commitment. 

“What really kind of drew our attention to this specific technology as it is economically cheaper than the competition,” he said. “Phoenix is committed to working smarter and spending wisely and it’s an ongoing effort to identify technologies to improve travel times and reduce congestion and accidents.”

Yang summed up by expressing his excitement at the new tech. 

“Together with the city, we are excited to bring advanced AI technologies from ASU onto Arizona roads for social good,” he said.