Automation of roads through the eyes of an IT specialist
I have long wanted to tell in a simple and accessible form about the construction of intelligent transport systems. Because it seems to me that this topic is not well disclosed in Russian, and Russian specialists in this field can be counted on the fingers. I cannot yet attribute myself to the number of these specialists, since I just started to understand the problem. But that is why I am interested in writing about it. I want to talk about how the industry lives now, what technologies and means exist for solving transport problems, what are the nuances and interesting features in this area. I want to write what I myself really wanted to read at least a year ago, when there was absolutely nothing around. If something seems naive or completely obvious to you, do not judge strictly. For me, this naivety is bread and salt. Only this naivety multiplied by rich imagination helps to build a detailed model of the future in the imagination. Which, with some knowledge of UML and BPML, turns into design documentation.
Since we are going to go some way together, let me introduce myself. My name is Aleksey. By profession I am a systems engineer, a professional system administrator. He graduated from a specialized university in 1999, worked as a systems engineer for 6 years, then specialized in IT management for 3 years, and then found himself in the role of business analyst.
When I was offered to try my hand in the field of road automation, I did not immediately agree. More precisely, internally I agreed immediately, but apparently for some time I did not agree for the species. He stayed for several months, after which he quit a major integrator, where he had previously worked on information security projects and got a job in a small software company engaged in the development of road software for the position of analyst.
I must say, colleagues, that this work is just a paradise for game lovers Sim City and Transport Tycoon. Where else would you have the opportunity to build the transport system of an entire city? And not on the computer screen, but alive.
Of course, not everything in this industry is rosy and beautiful. Especially in our country. Further about the problems.
First, builders reign in the industry. These tough guys very cleverly draw interchanges and stick in traffic lights, and then they all cast it in concrete and metal. It turns out beautifully and in a modern way. The customer’s eye rejoices, and motorists are pleased to drive under the luminous placards and feel part of Europe. Here is just one thing that darkens the sky on the horizon. This is a small trifle, a trifle in general, consisting in the fact that all this machinery does not work at all. That is, it does not fulfill the function of organizing traffic. No, I do not argue, the denouement is always better than its absence. And the more interchanges we have, the easier it will be to move along capital roads. But the crazy money that was invested in the decoupling equipment was mostly wasted. Of course, there are exceptions. I say it so that they don’t poke me in the face with wonderful projects that are really wonderful, and I know about some. But they do not do any weather in the industry at all and do not change the average temperature in the hospital.
Here are all Muscovites and traveling citizens traveled around the Moscow Ring Road. The road is equipped with beautiful signs and bright signs of variable information. Signs and signs usually show the same thing. Gradually, drivers stopped paying attention to these signs as a source of traffic information. You can snort and swear for a long time, but now I know that if the creators of this system on the Moscow Ring Road had at least seven spans in their forehead, they could not have done anything worthwhile. Because a spherical horse in a vacuum, which is the Moscow Ring Road on a city scale, remains a beautiful and useless abstraction without the support of radial streets.
Or here is the third transport ring. Wonderful equipment of a world famous company, excellent control rooms. And almost completely manual control. And not because they do not know how. And just this is another spherical horse in a vacuum, another transport ring suspended in an information void.
Things are slightly better at radii, which are equipped with smart traffic lights in an experimental manner. There sometimes even optimization of traffic flows happens, and rare witnesses even reported the presence of a green wave. But as you know, there are no miracles in the iron and steel industry, and in the permanent traffic jam mode, excellent algorithms for coordinated control of traffic lights on the highway do not work, but completely different algorithms work, which are implemented only in a couple of unfortunate cities that, like Moscow, are suffocating in traffic jams. These algorithms begin to carefully scatter the jam in the direction from its end to the beginning. No man can cope here, only an intricate algorithm. Traffic control in traffic congestion is the real art of programming, the most complex adaptive schemes tied to the present, the past and future are not tolerant of human intervention at the same time. The electronic “brain” of such a system receives information from hundreds of detectors in all significant directions, as well as from adjacent systems. And all this so that motorists spend 30% less time in traffic.
Specialists accompanying one of the traffic lights control systems on the radial highway boasted that they could correctly determine the intersections that traffic police officers controlled in manual mode. A sign of this control is increasing faster than usual traffic jam. No matter how hard the traffic police try to improve the situation, they cannot do it, despite all their experience in such matters. Because no one can analyze so many factors at the same time and make the right decision. For this, in general, specialized computer systems have been created. Another thing is that in our realities, these systems often remain blind and deaf, without sensors and detectors, because the builders hung the sensors in the wrong place. And where it’s necessary, they didn’t hang it, because it’s not their plot, but a plot of a completely different company, which did not say anything about the sensors ... And what can a deaf and blind system help a person, except how to confuse him? So operators turn off smart algorithms and take control of all objects in their calloused hands. They look through the surveillance cameras at the road and scatter the streams manually.
As you can see, colleagues, the situation in the industry is quite dense. If such a situation were in the financial sector, then half of the chief accountants would already be in places not so remote, there would be no banks at all, and barter would flourish everywhere. But we have a lot of accounting specialists, all sorts of smart programs are also available, and it would never occur to anyone to leave such a program without initial data. But this is the result of the evolutionary development of the industry, multiplied by the harsh need of business and strict government control.
In the meantime, here is the second problem, which is a consequence of the first. Knowing our morals, Western partners do not behave in the most correct way. They do not even try to explain or tell anything about their decisions. The technical details of their products remain a mystery, they go to our market with a full set of hardware, software and turnkey installation services. And often at a significantly overpriced price. Yes, and it is difficult to judge them if the construction work does not provide for any development or any decent documentation of the software. I’m not talking about the “features” of pricing in the construction of roads, which got everyone’s teeth sore. This is a separate, extremely painful topic, which I would really not like to discuss in the framework of this purely technical blog.
Actually, in the same way there is no quality control of installed software. Quite often, unfortunate dispatchers have installed hastily translated interfaces from foreign languages, focused on unknown business processes and foreign production relations. It’s good if you come across a development from “someone else’s shoulder” that has not been changed much by our “Kulibins”, preserving some aesthetics of interfaces and ergonomic solutions honed by foreign users. More often it is hastily screwed-on forms with minimal functionality. for example, the user is forced to select surveillance cameras from the drop-down list, constantly missing the desired camera and losing valuable time during an accident. Time that can cost someone life, seriously.
Next time we’ll talk about traffic jams, traffic lights and how to build a modern transport infrastructure in terms of software.
Since we are going to go some way together, let me introduce myself. My name is Aleksey. By profession I am a systems engineer, a professional system administrator. He graduated from a specialized university in 1999, worked as a systems engineer for 6 years, then specialized in IT management for 3 years, and then found himself in the role of business analyst.
When I was offered to try my hand in the field of road automation, I did not immediately agree. More precisely, internally I agreed immediately, but apparently for some time I did not agree for the species. He stayed for several months, after which he quit a major integrator, where he had previously worked on information security projects and got a job in a small software company engaged in the development of road software for the position of analyst.
I must say, colleagues, that this work is just a paradise for game lovers Sim City and Transport Tycoon. Where else would you have the opportunity to build the transport system of an entire city? And not on the computer screen, but alive.
Of course, not everything in this industry is rosy and beautiful. Especially in our country. Further about the problems.
First, builders reign in the industry. These tough guys very cleverly draw interchanges and stick in traffic lights, and then they all cast it in concrete and metal. It turns out beautifully and in a modern way. The customer’s eye rejoices, and motorists are pleased to drive under the luminous placards and feel part of Europe. Here is just one thing that darkens the sky on the horizon. This is a small trifle, a trifle in general, consisting in the fact that all this machinery does not work at all. That is, it does not fulfill the function of organizing traffic. No, I do not argue, the denouement is always better than its absence. And the more interchanges we have, the easier it will be to move along capital roads. But the crazy money that was invested in the decoupling equipment was mostly wasted. Of course, there are exceptions. I say it so that they don’t poke me in the face with wonderful projects that are really wonderful, and I know about some. But they do not do any weather in the industry at all and do not change the average temperature in the hospital.
Here are all Muscovites and traveling citizens traveled around the Moscow Ring Road. The road is equipped with beautiful signs and bright signs of variable information. Signs and signs usually show the same thing. Gradually, drivers stopped paying attention to these signs as a source of traffic information. You can snort and swear for a long time, but now I know that if the creators of this system on the Moscow Ring Road had at least seven spans in their forehead, they could not have done anything worthwhile. Because a spherical horse in a vacuum, which is the Moscow Ring Road on a city scale, remains a beautiful and useless abstraction without the support of radial streets.
Or here is the third transport ring. Wonderful equipment of a world famous company, excellent control rooms. And almost completely manual control. And not because they do not know how. And just this is another spherical horse in a vacuum, another transport ring suspended in an information void.
Things are slightly better at radii, which are equipped with smart traffic lights in an experimental manner. There sometimes even optimization of traffic flows happens, and rare witnesses even reported the presence of a green wave. But as you know, there are no miracles in the iron and steel industry, and in the permanent traffic jam mode, excellent algorithms for coordinated control of traffic lights on the highway do not work, but completely different algorithms work, which are implemented only in a couple of unfortunate cities that, like Moscow, are suffocating in traffic jams. These algorithms begin to carefully scatter the jam in the direction from its end to the beginning. No man can cope here, only an intricate algorithm. Traffic control in traffic congestion is the real art of programming, the most complex adaptive schemes tied to the present, the past and future are not tolerant of human intervention at the same time. The electronic “brain” of such a system receives information from hundreds of detectors in all significant directions, as well as from adjacent systems. And all this so that motorists spend 30% less time in traffic.
Specialists accompanying one of the traffic lights control systems on the radial highway boasted that they could correctly determine the intersections that traffic police officers controlled in manual mode. A sign of this control is increasing faster than usual traffic jam. No matter how hard the traffic police try to improve the situation, they cannot do it, despite all their experience in such matters. Because no one can analyze so many factors at the same time and make the right decision. For this, in general, specialized computer systems have been created. Another thing is that in our realities, these systems often remain blind and deaf, without sensors and detectors, because the builders hung the sensors in the wrong place. And where it’s necessary, they didn’t hang it, because it’s not their plot, but a plot of a completely different company, which did not say anything about the sensors ... And what can a deaf and blind system help a person, except how to confuse him? So operators turn off smart algorithms and take control of all objects in their calloused hands. They look through the surveillance cameras at the road and scatter the streams manually.
As you can see, colleagues, the situation in the industry is quite dense. If such a situation were in the financial sector, then half of the chief accountants would already be in places not so remote, there would be no banks at all, and barter would flourish everywhere. But we have a lot of accounting specialists, all sorts of smart programs are also available, and it would never occur to anyone to leave such a program without initial data. But this is the result of the evolutionary development of the industry, multiplied by the harsh need of business and strict government control.
In the meantime, here is the second problem, which is a consequence of the first. Knowing our morals, Western partners do not behave in the most correct way. They do not even try to explain or tell anything about their decisions. The technical details of their products remain a mystery, they go to our market with a full set of hardware, software and turnkey installation services. And often at a significantly overpriced price. Yes, and it is difficult to judge them if the construction work does not provide for any development or any decent documentation of the software. I’m not talking about the “features” of pricing in the construction of roads, which got everyone’s teeth sore. This is a separate, extremely painful topic, which I would really not like to discuss in the framework of this purely technical blog.
Actually, in the same way there is no quality control of installed software. Quite often, unfortunate dispatchers have installed hastily translated interfaces from foreign languages, focused on unknown business processes and foreign production relations. It’s good if you come across a development from “someone else’s shoulder” that has not been changed much by our “Kulibins”, preserving some aesthetics of interfaces and ergonomic solutions honed by foreign users. More often it is hastily screwed-on forms with minimal functionality. for example, the user is forced to select surveillance cameras from the drop-down list, constantly missing the desired camera and losing valuable time during an accident. Time that can cost someone life, seriously.
Next time we’ll talk about traffic jams, traffic lights and how to build a modern transport infrastructure in terms of software.