“Microsoft’s got a smarter way to keep you out of snarls.”
San Francisco — When it is not sullying Yahoo! and Google of forging monopolies or fabricating hostile takeovers, Microsoft keeps itself busy working extra hours to make your life a little bit better.
Microsoft on Thursday announced plans to introduce a software technology called “Clearflow,” a Web-based driving directions service intended to keep drivers out of traffic jams.
Clearflow, which incorporates complex software models that uses algorithms to model hundreds of thousands of road segments, was developed over the period of five years by a team of artificial-intelligence researchers at the software giant’s Research laboratories.
According to The New York Times, the venture first took off the ground in 2003, when Microsoft AI researcher Eric Horvitz was snarled up in Seattle. “It hit me that we had to do all the side streets,” said Horvitz of his Augustinian moment. “We really needed to understand the whole city.”
It is a highly ambitious attempt to add AI machine-learning techniques to tackle the complex problem of predicting traffic congestion.
“At long last, the researchers produced algorithms for Seattle’s traffic based 16,500 trips covering more than 125,000 miles.”
It is a lot faster to stay on the freeway, rather than alternative route. Although a pile-up on a freeway, for instance, often sends cars spilling into surface streets to avoid the mess, tying them up as badly as the original jam. But how is it you would know this?
Clearflow makes forecast about these types of situations. Clearflow will present drivers with substitute information for routes that takes into account prevailing traffic patterns, according to the Times.
The new service will from time to time plan routes that may not be spontaneous to a driver. For example, in some instances Clearflow will calculate that a trip will be faster if a driver stays on a crowded highway, rather than taking a detour, because side streets are even more backed up by cars that have fled the original traffic jam.
This innovative technology is aimed straightforwardly at traffic reporting utilities from Google, Yahoo and MapQuest, among others.
The Clearflow system will be freely available as part of the Microsoft’s Live.com site (maps.live.com) for 72 cities in the United States. Microsoft states that the new tool will provide drivers with different route information that is more accurate and attuned to current traffic patterns on both freeways and side streets.
The latest venture is part of Microsoft’s efforts to catch up with Google, the leading search engine provider, by offering an attractive array of related services surrounding its Live search service.