The Texas Department of Transportation has partnered with Rekor to address Austin's escalating traffic challenges amid a $7 billion infrastructure project. The collaboration leverages NVIDIA Metropolis for real-time video analysis and NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX modules for edge AI computing, transforming how the city manages its increasingly congested roadways.
"Texas has been trying to meet that growth and demand on the roadways by investing a lot in infrastructure, and they're focusing a lot on digital infrastructure," Shervin Esfahani, Vice President of Global Marketing and Communications at Rekor, told the NVIDIA blog. "It's super complex, and they realised their traditional systems were unable to really manage and understand it in real time."
The company's primary solutions, Rekor Command and Rekor Discover, provide comprehensive traffic management capabilities. Command offers real-time incident detection and response, while Discover focuses on automated data capture and analytics for future planning.
"For every minute an incident happens and stays on the road, it creates four minutes of traffic, which puts a strain on the road, and the likelihood of a secondary incident like an accident from rubbernecking massively goes up," Paul-Matthew Zamsky, Vice President of Strategic Growth and Partnerships at Rekor, explained to the NVIDIA blog. "Austin deployed Rekor Command and saw a 159% increase in incident detections, and they were able to respond eight and a half minutes faster to those incidents."
The technology integrates various data sources, including traffic camera footage, weather information, and construction updates, using AI to identify anomalies and potential incidents. "They look at it and respond to it, and they are doing it faster than ever before," Esfahani told the NVIDIA blog. "It helps save lives on the road, and it also helps people's quality of life, helps them get home faster and stay out of traffic, and it reduces the strain on the system in the city of Austin."
The system's success in Austin has led to expanded deployments across multiple U.S. states, including Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and Oklahoma, as well as international locations like Israel. The company is also implementing similar solutions in Philadelphia's Navy Yard, where it's helping manage traffic flow and plan for electric vehicle infrastructure.