Can AI help solve Hartford's pothole problem?
'Since I've been mayor, I have, almost from the get-go, gotten complaints from residents about conditions of roads,' Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said at a press conference on Thursday.
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Arulampalam was joined by representatives of Vialytics, a German firm that developed the technology that Hartford will deploy on municipal vehicles to detect roadway hazards. The technology utilizes an iPhone camera mounted on the inside of a vehicle's front windshield.
Using Vialytics' app, the vehicle's driver must first complete a short calibration before heading out on the streets. Once the vehicle is on the road, the app automatically captures images of the road every 10 to 15 feet, Vialytics's staff said. Then, the images are fed into a proprietary A.I. model, which has been trained to recognize more than a dozen roadway defects, including potholes and cracks.
'At first, humans were training that algorithm and actually clicking where see a crack, where we see a pothole,' Tom Cummins, a member of Vialytics's U.S. team, said. 'Over time, the AI, the model itself, is actually learning what a crack looks like, what a pothole looks like.'
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For the capital city, Arulampalam said the deployment of A.I. to assist their two human road inspectors will help fill in cracks — literally and figuratively. Currently, the city relies on its inspectors and public complaints to identify roads in need of repair. That system can often miss hazards and inadvertently skew repair orders toward neighborhoods that are more likely to have residents who are familiar with filing complaints, city officials said. Vialytics' software is designed to provide more comprehensive coverage while ensuring that each of Hartford's neighborhoods receives the attention they need.
Having a constant technological eye keeping tabs on the conditions of the capital city's roadways can raise privacy concerns. Still, Vialytics' top American executive stated that the German company operates under the European Union's data privacy regime, as outlined in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). GDPR is generally considered to be stricter than any of the applicable data privacy laws in the United States. Vialytics's systems do not collect license plates and faces, the company executive said.
Arulampalam said the new technology is going to be impactful for residents not only because it will help address existing potholes but also because it will enable city public works officials to more easily identify smaller defects before they turn into bigger hazards — all at a cost of less than $40,000 to the city in the upcoming fiscal year.
'This innovation is going to lead the way for quality of life in the city and make a huge difference for our residents,' Arulampalam said.
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