September 22, 2008

Audi have teamed up with a company in their home town of Ingolstadt to develop the experimental ‘Travolution’ system.  The technology sets up a two way communication between the traffic lights and cars in the vicinty.  This enables the lights to let traffic through in an efficient manner, and the technology in the car communicates with the driver in an attempt to let them drive past lights withtout stopping, wherever possible.

It’s hoped that in addition to reducing emissions wasted sitting at traffic lights the system will enable the traffic lights to work more efficiently towards keeping people on the move.   The communications modules built into each traffic light are able to send messages to cars in the vicinity, alerting them to the time remaining their current green phase, or to wait until their next one.

The car’s onboard system is then able to calculate the speed which the driver must maintain in order to pass through the light during this green phase, and displays this via the Multi Media Interface display.  This will encourage the drivers to maintain the right speed to get through the next green light without stopping.  A network of 46 of the ‘intelligent’ traffic lights has been installed in the centre of Ingolstadt, the software to which they are all linked optimising their phasing to bring stopping times down to a minimum, reducing fuel consumption and unnecessary emissions in the process.

As the scheme is currently being tested using modified A5 and A6 Avant models, it’s hard to see it making it’s way too far out if Ingolstadt as in it’s current form it would only be useful for Audi cars.  It’s hard to see any towns and cities outside Germany committing to make large scale changes to their traffic lights in order to incorporate the system.  In the even that the system was taken on by other large volume motor manufacturers then there may be more willingness to accommodate.  But as many other manufacturers are using different systems to combat the same problem, most notably Citroen and BMW with their ‘stop start’ technology, it’s hard to see that scheme taking off, if nothing else it’s too reliant on council co-operation.

The new Audi system looks like an interesting idea but it’s hard to see it working on a practical level as it will require wholesale upgrades on trafficlights to enable the communication to take place.

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