Scalable and Sustainable AI Solutions for Complete Streets Data Creation and Maintenance with Off-the-shelf Dash Cams
By: JC-Techs Corp.
Project Objective & Overview
The objective of the project is to develop computer vision-based AI technologies and systems for automatically digitizing and maintaining street infrastructure data by only utilizing standard dash cam street view footage. The company also delivered software tools for data verification.
The goals of the system development is to provide verifiable, affordable, scalable, and sustainable solutions to address the following key challenges:
- Incomplete data details in street infrastructure attributes.
- State or unreliable data due to lack of mechanisms for affordable, trusted, and continuous updates with sufficient groundings.
Pilot site: Tacoma and Lakewood, WA
Key Results & Findings
Technical approach:
- To ensure that no need to manually watch the footage for miss-detected objects, our first technical goal is to successfully detect all the street objects of interest from the dashcam street view footage. We have achieved this zero-miss goal for traffic lights, road markings, parking signs, crosswalk, traffic signs, pedestrian lights, directional signs, and fire hydrants.
- Developed tracking and classification algorithms to remove the duplicate detected instances and the false positive instances and correctly categorize the detected street objects.
- Developed a cross-validation system (right figure) to ensure 100% accurate data creation.
Key challenges:
- Object localization
- Unique object tracking
Opportunities identified:
- Automate road condition monitoring
- Asset data maintenance
- Parking inventory management
- Data validation with grounding
Company Info
JC-Techs is a University of Washington spin-off startup, founded by a team with strong AI and software expertise and a proven track record of securing grants and purchase orders from federal agencies and municipal governments. JC-Techs has obtained the purchase orders from Las Vegas, Bellevue, and San Francisco.
Project POC: contact@jc-techs.com
Website: https://www.jc-techs.com/
Next Steps
Dashcam footage fusion: city drives using rental vehicles with dashcams, integration with existing municipal fleets with dashcams, and continuous video feeds from commercial vehicle dashcams, which enable full city coverage within a one-month cycle.
Additional investments: Federal fundings and private investments
Commercialization plan:
- Partner with private companies for data creation and maintenance and asset condition monitoring.
- Data validation services for private partners and government agencies.
- Serve under resourced community to fill City agency workforce gaps.