Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered solutions may soon make roads in India a safer place to drive. A unique AI approach that uses the predictive power of Artificial Intelligence to identify risks on the road, and a collision alert system to communicate timely alerts to drivers, to make several improvements related to road safety, is being implemented in Nagpur City with the objective of resulting in a significant reduction of accidents.

The project ‘Intelligent Solutions for Road Safety through Technology and Engineering’ (iRASTE) at Nagpur will identify potential accident-causing scenarios while driving a vehicle and alert drivers about the same with the help of the Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS). The project will also identify ‘grey spots’, i.e., by data analysis and mobility analysis by continuously monitoring dynamic risks on the entire road network. Grey spots are locations on roads, left unaddressed could become blackspots (locations with fatal accidents). The system also conducts continuous monitoring of roads and designs engineering fixes to correct existing road blackspots for preventive maintenance and improved road infrastructure.

The iRASTE project is under by the I-Hub Foundation, IIIT Hyderabad, a Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) set up in the technology vertical- Data Banks & Data Services supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) under its National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS) along with INAI (Applied Artificial Intelligence Research Institute). The project consortium includes CSIR-CRRI, and Nagpur Municipal Corporation, with Mahindra and Intel as the industry partners.

The Hub is working to coordinate, integrate, and amplify basic and applied research in broad data-driven technologies as well as its dissemination and translation across the country. One of the primary aims is to prepare a critical resource for future use by researchers, startups, and industry, mainly in the areas of smart mobility, healthcare along with smart buildings.

What makes the iRASTE project even more unique is that Artificial Intelligence and technology are being applied to create practical solutions, as a blueprint, for Indian conditions. While the initial rollout of iRASTE is in Nagpur, the eventual goal is to replicate the solution in other cities too. Currently, talks are on with the Telangana government to adopt the technology in a fleet of buses that ply highways. There are further plans to extend the scope of iRASTE to Goa and Gujarat also.

I-Hub Foundation has also used techniques ranging from machine learning, computer vision and computational sensing for several other data-driven technological solutions in the mobility sector. One such solution is the India Driving Dataset (IDD), a dataset for road scene understanding in unstructured environments captured from Indian roads, which stands out by deviating from the worldwide assumptions of well-delineated infrastructure such as lanes, limited traffic participants, low variation in an object or background appearance and strong adherence to traffic rules.

The dataset, a first of its kind, consists of 10,000 images, finely annotated with 34 classes collected from 182 drive sequences on Indian roads obtained from a front-facing camera attached to a car driven around Hyderabad, Bangalore, and their outskirts. The dataset is released in the public domain for unrestricted use under public license and is becoming a defacto dataset for all analysis on Indian road scenes. Currently, there are over 5000 registered users for this dataset across the world.

Another dataset called Open World Object Detection on Road Scenes (ORDER) has also been developed using the India Driving Dataset that could be used by autonomous navigation systems in Indian driving conditions for localization and classification of the objects in a road scene. Besides this, a Mobility Car Data Platform (MCDP) has been designed with several sensors – cameras, and LIDARs, with the necessary computing for anyone to capture or process data on the car that can help researchers and start-ups in India test their automotive algorithms and approaches in navigation and research on Indian roads.

LaneRoadNet (LRNet), a new framework with an integrated mechanism considering lane and road parameters using deep learning, has been designed to address problems of Indian roads, which have several obstacles, occluded lane markings, broken dividers, cracks, potholes, etc. that put the drivers at significant risk while driving. In this framework, a road quality score is calculated with the help of a modular scoring function. The final score helps the authorities to assess road quality and prioritize maintenance schedules of the road so as to improve the drivability.

In order to help local self-government institutions employ suitable rejuvenation methods in tree starved streets, I-Hub Foundation designed a framework for street tree detection, counting and visualization that uses object detectors and a matching counting algorithm. The work has paved way for a quick, accurate, and inexpensive way to recognize tree-starved streets.

The government has taken a series of strict measures to tame inflation- Shri Piyush Goyal
Union Minister for Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles, Shri Piyush Goyal today asked the Indian industry to procure locally wherever there is an opportunity so that domestic supply chains are fortified and become more resilient and the tendency to place excessive dependence on international supply chains is curbed. He was addressing the “Breakfast session Discussion on Trade 4.0” in Davos, Switzerland today.

Observing that the India story had been receiving a lot of enthusiasm across the world, the Minister said that in spite of constraints like Covid 19, chip shortages, conflict, rising commodity prices, container shortages and significant shipping and logistics issues it has been facing in the last two years, which caused massive supply chain disruptions that threw the global economy off-balance, Indian businesses had displayed great resilience, overshooting export targets and achieving USD 421.8 billion worth of exports.

Quoting the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, Shri Goyal said that India amongst all these problems is an oasis that reflects transparency, offers trust and timeliness and added that the nation had responded to every crisis in a timely manner. This responsiveness, he said, is a manifestation of the resilience that Indian businesses have to offer and the resilience and confidence of political leadership.

Minister urges Indian businesses to look at boosting value-added exports
Speaking of the need for working together towards a shared vision, Shri Goyal expressed confidence that India could achieve a target of USD 1 Trillion worth of merchandise and services exported each by 2030 if we worked as a team.

Noting that in the last 8 years, the government had focussed extensively on structural reforms the Minister said that each one of those movements has been holding India in good stead during times of crisis.

The Minister said that Digital India had helped India work during pandemic-induced lockdowns. He added that Missions such as Swacch Bharat, Jan Dhan-Adhaar-Mobile trinity, financial inclusion, Ayushman Bharat, vaccination programs etc. had helped prepare India for the next level of growth and engagement with the world. He underscored that the world could look at India as a reliable alternative to the status quo and invited manufacturing, investment and technology to come to India

He stressed that India had taken a series of strict measures to tame inflation, keep interest rates in check and rein in rupee depreciation so that growth and prosperity are not affected.

He urged Indian industry to look at boosting value-added exports and ensure that new jobs came into India instead of raw materials going out of India. Highlighting the serious efforts being made in that direction, the Minister said that the government was striving to ensure orderly behaviour of prices and ensure that businesses add value and jobs.

PM Gati Shakti will help improve infrastructure planning and bring down logistics costs- Shri Piyush Goyal
Stressing upon the government’s bid to bring down logistics costs through measures such as PM GatiShakti, the Minister said that the National Master Plan would help improve infrastructure planning and ensure the implementation of projects within time and budget.

Assuring that the government would wholeheartedly support businesses, the Minister urged the industry to bring scale into all economic activities.

Expressing concern over the excessive dependence on international supply chains, Shri Goyal urged businesses to procure locally wherever there is an opportunity. He asked businesses to support each other and help fortify domestic supply chains.

Referring to Trade Agreements recently inked with UAE and Australia, the Minister said that these agreements were opening new frontiers in international trade. He added that agreements with Canada, EU, UK, Israel and GCC were in the pipeline. The Minister said that the world had great confidence in India and wanted to engage with it enthusiastically.

Asks Indian Missions all over the world to support Indian industry and pitch for Indian businesses
Touching upon the immense potential that the tourism sector held, the Minister asked for more players to come into the tourism sector. He added that trade, tourism and technology, the three headline items that all Indian Missions across the world have been asked to promote, had to take off so that India is recognized as a quality supplier of goods and services.

He also assured us that every Indian mission had been tasked with supporting Indian industry and pitching for our businesses. Every Mission, every office, every official is now ready to stand for Indian businesses and that is what will spearhead trade 4.0, he added.

The Minister remarked that the government was on a mission to rewrite the script of a New India that is ready to play the leading role in global trade and asked investors to come to invest in India, in its ideas, talent and limitless potential. India is the future, the Minister said.