Ordinarily, traffic lights change color in response to predetermined rules and induction loop sensors embedded in the road. According to new research, however, making those lights artificially intelligent may keep traffic flowing faster and smoother. The study is being conducted as part of Germany's KI4LSA project – it's funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, and includes several partner organizations. One of those partners, the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation, recently installed high-resolution cameras and radar sensors at a busy traffic-light-controlled intersection in the city of Lemgo. Over time, this setup recorded the number of vehicles waiting for the lights to change, the amount of time that each vehicle had to wait, and the average speed at which the vehicles went through the intersection.

Groundbreaking new traffic lights fitted with artificial intelligence could create safer roads and bring an end to rush hour gridlock. 'Smart' traffic lights will monitor speed and congestion, prioritise cyclists, buses and ambulances with green lights and use heatmaps to analyse how pedestrians and motorists are using the roads. Milton Keynes is set to be the first city to trial the system from September, having invested some £3 million on 2,500 sensors across 50 square miles, monitoring all major junction points and car parking spaces. 'Smart' traffic lights will monitor speed and congestion and prioritise cyclists, buses and ambulances with green lights (stock image) The monitors recognise different vehicles and individual road users and will be able to regulate traffic in real-time. At present, traffic lights are sequenced but not reactive to the vehicles around them and traffic monitoring is still done manually.

Your commute could get a lot shorter without you even knowing thanks to traffic lights with artificial intelligence brains inside. Over the past couple years, a startup named Surtrac has been mentally upgrading traffic lights in Pittsburgh with artificial intelligence. These lights collect data on the amount of traffic from cameras and radar signals, and the network of lights coordinates to ensure that all the traffic passes through intersections as fast as possible. The AI system began with nine intersections in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood in 2012 and has quietly expanded to 50 intersections. The startup plans to implement their network across the whole city.