Wavetronixby Louise Smyth
“Our intention was to bring [our] radar expertise to bear and solve some serious problems in the transportation industry.”
TTi talks to the man making waves in the field of radar detection—and finds out why the future is looking bright for this technology.
It is a difficult undertaking for a new company to enter the traffic market, especially in the field of detection. “You have to have some pretty compelling products with high differentiation in order to do that,” explains David Arnold, co-founder and CEO, Wavetronix.
The founding of Wavetronix in 2000 was the result of a 20-year span of research into radar design by Arnold himself, although he is adamant the company's formation was more than just unearthing a niche in the market to fill: “Our intention at the outset was to bring that radar expertise to bear and to solve some serious problems in the transportation industry.”
Radar-based products have been the subject of rapid evolution in the short time Wavetronix has been around. The advantages of radar are simple and obvious—all-weather and all environments. The Utah-based company is already onto the second and third generations of its traffic detection products: “These products use digital techniques and where that shows up is in your transmit signal—the radar signals are well controlled in the later generations. The first-generation devices work; they have all the advantages of radar, but they don't have the accuracy or the performance over temperature changes, over seasons and over installations from one location to another.”
Within two years of the company's inception, the second-generation product was launched. Although SmartSensor is perhaps what Wavetronix is most widely known for, Arnold is keen to promote the company's latest-generation sibling, launched in 2006, the SmartSensor High Definition: “It's called HD because it collects consistently accurate traffic data in high definition. This benefits from our Digital Wave Radar II technology, which measures traffic volume, individual vehicle speed, average speed, average headway, average gap, vehicle classification and presence, and so on.” Operating at five times the bandwidth, SmartSensor HD has five times the resolution of the original SmartSensor, a detection range of 250ft and the capability to detect 10 lanes of traffic simultaneously.
“This is perhaps the first time that radar has a true advantage from an accuracy point of view over an embedded device.”
And unlike previous generations where set-up involved setting thresholds and lane boundaries to help optimize spill-over effect, this latest product detects vehicles and, after detection, assigns them to a lane. As well as making configuration easier, this has other clear benefits: “In many parts of the USA we are very susceptible to snowfall—and when snow gets on the roadway, drivers can't see the lane markings and they tend not to drive in between the lines. But with the third-generation technology, it will still assign those cars to the closest lane. Alternatively, if you have a merging lane where you have a lot of lane-changing activity, it will detect those vehicles accurately, even if they are straddling and changing lanes. This is really the first time that radar has had an advantage over, say, a well-tuned loop.”
Wavetonix's CEO is particularly frank when discussing the way that various detection methods are perceived by the traffic industry: “Loops are seen as being superior in terms of performance to above-ground devices, but above-ground devices are definitely making inroads to similar levels of accuracy. However, there are other problems with loops, such as maintenance issues and the fact that they can go out of tune. This is perhaps the first time that radar has had a true advantage from an accuracy point of view over an embedded device, because if you have unpredictable lane-changing behavior, loops are inaccurate.”
Another advantage of the SmartSensor HD is that it can achieve per-vehicle speed: “It benefits from two radars inside with beams that are separated by a small distance. It looks at how long it takes the vehicle to go that short distance and calculates the speed: it has a per-vehicle speed within 2 or 3mph on each vehicle that goes past. This is a big differentiation between the previous products.”
Industry take up of the SmartSensor HD has exceeded Arnold's expectations and he predicts 2007 will be even better. As always in the transportation industry, people want to see products prove their value for a while before making a large-scale investment. As well as the transition of existing customers gradually upgrading to the latest generation, Wavetronix is also observing a slightly different phenomenon.
David Arnold with the SmartSensor HD
“We are now witnessing some combinations of technologies deployed, where people are using the HD in high-statistical applications and the original SmartSensor is being used for the main part of their data collection. So they almost pepper their systems with HD units to collect the higher level of data accuracy.”
Wavetronix is certainly thinking outside of the USA in terms of market potential. The company has just launched in Europe—a region where high growth is anticipated—while ASia is also a big focus of attention: “One thing Asia really asked for was per-vehicle speed and none of the existing radar offerings—neither ours nor our competitors—could offer that, until we released SmartSensor HD, that is. I don't know why but I have noted a lot of pull for per-vehicle speed accuracy in that region.”
Arnold also recently revealed large system deployments in both Taiwan and China, bringing the company's total Asian deployments to over 500 SmartSensor units in 2006 alone. In Taiwan, officials in Taipei City selected SmartSensor for deployment after extensive evaluation and they will be installed at more than 200 mid-block detection locations. In China, though, Wavetronix recently deployed an additional 190 SmartSensors in Jiangsu Province, bringing the total number of SmartSensors to 300 for that particular freeway monitoring system. In this deployment, SmartSensors are being used to detect traffic volumes, speeds and occupancies across multiple lanes, and to report that data directly to the province's freeway monitoring center.
Both countries now have more than 10 separate projects that rely solely on SmartSensor's patented Digital Wave Radar for consistently accurate detections, bringing the total number of deployed sensors in Asia to more than 800.
As well as the SmartSensor range, Wavetronix is also targeting other sectors. The CMD (pronounced ‘command’) range is described by Arnold as “a line of products for managing those sensor networks, for managing the data that comes in off those sensor networks, and distributing the data into other subsystems that utilize it for traveler information, or other purposes, such as statistical reporting or archiving, etc.”
Integration into legacy environments is crucial and although DataCollector supports SmartSensor, it is additionally a standalone product. “It also collects from our competitors' products: from the EIS RTMS unit, the 3M cards, and the ASIM triple technology above-ground classification device. We're also working on a driver that will integrate with the Autoscope SoloPro from Image Sensing Systems.
“The idea of DataCollector is that it gathers and manages real-time data from traffic detection networks. It currently has the largest driver library of any data collector on the market and it achieves this very robustly. It is also designed to handle very unfriendly networks and still collect that data effectively,”
The CMD line was put to the test recently in a study conducted by a DOT that was implementing its first true ITS system: “They used a new product we've just launched called DataMonitor. This keeps an eye on the data that's coming in from their sensor networks through the DataCoillector, monitoring the health of the device itself. For instance, if the device stops communicating or starts returning suspicious data, you may have a loop that has gone out of calibration. DataMonitor will actually detect that the occupancy and volume levels are our of whack with each other and notify an operator.”
DataMonitor performed will in terms of accuracy with regard to incidents and congestion and Arnold is delighted with the results: “We outperformed our competitors on incident detection by a huge percentage. We are showing 85 percent accuracy in a very basic deployment against competitors that were showing missed detections over half the time. The reason that we win large projects all over the USA is because time after time our sensors demonstrate two main advantages: they're most accurate for volumes and speed and they install easily and consistently from location to location. It's because they work.”
It would be easy for Arnold and his team to sit back and reap the rewards of their latest products, but his thoughts are now focusing on current trends and their implications: “I would agree with every other company that makes above-ground detection; the trend is definitely toward devices that are above-ground and out of the road—by the side of the road or above—but out of the road nevertheless. Non-intrusive is certainly the way forward and this is a trend that just seems to be gaining even more momentum.”
While considering the current technologies (acoustic, video and radar primarily) and their capabilities, there is a great deal of enthusiasm on his part for the potential of radar: “There's a lot more that can be achieved with radar technology for above-ground detection,” Arnold concludes. “It has many inherent advantages over the other current technologies and I think it's fair to say that we are far from being through in terms of the level of quality of radar and product that we can produce for above-ground detection.”