Improving Urban Mobility: using artificial intelligence and new technologies to connect supply and demand

TL;DR

This paper surveys how artificial intelligence and new technologies are used in intelligent transportation systems to improve urban mobility by managing both supply and demand, aiming for more efficient and less stressful travel.

Contribution

It presents a holistic survey of AI-based solutions addressing both transportation supply and demand, including their integration, which is a novel perspective in ITS research.

Findings

AI enhances demand management in urban mobility.

Integrated supply-demand approaches improve transportation efficiency.

The survey covers diverse AI applications like machine learning and autonomous vehicles.

Abstract

As the demand for mobility in our society seems to increase, the various issues centered on urban mobility are among those that worry most city inhabitants in this planet. For instance, how to go from A to B in an efficient (but also less stressful) way? These questions and concerns have not changed even during the covid-19 pandemic; on the contrary, as the current stand, people who are avoiding public transportation are only contributing to an increase in the vehicular traffic. The are of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) aims at investigating how to employ information and communication technologies to problems related to transportation. This may mean monitoring and managing the infrastructure (e.g., traffic roads, traffic signals, etc.). However, currently, ITS is also targeting the management of demand. In this panorama, artificial intelligence plays an important role, especially with the advances in machine learning that translates in the use of computational vision, connected and autonomous vehicles, agent-based simulation, among others. In the present work, a survey of several works developed by our group are discussed in a holistic perspective, i.e., they cover not only the supply side (as commonly found in ITS works), but also the demand side, and, in an novel perspective, the integration of both.