It was a pleasure to be interviewed by the Royal Academy of Engineering for their Spotlight Series recently.

Who are you?

I am Yang Lu, CTO and co-founder of VivaCity. We are working to revolutionise urban mobility by bringing cutting-edge AI to road infrastructure. At VivaCity, we are combining our AI powered sensor and optimisation technologies to enable traffic lights to respond to an ever-changing road environment and for all types of road-user.

What inspired you to create with VivaCity?

The founders of VivaCity met while we were working on a student project to build a solar powered racing car. Following this experience, we were interested in starting a company in the mobility and transport space. It was clear to us that despite great technical innovations around electric and autonomous vehicles, the transport infrastructure that underpins our roads was still built on technology from the 1980’s. We started VivaCity with a vision to bring the AI revolution to that transport infrastructure.

How does it work?

At VivaCity we have developed AI software to interpret video from a camera device, allowing the software to identify and recognise objects much like a human would. Combining this with our custom camera platform with an embedded AI processor, we can deploy a low-cost sensor mounted on lamp posts or traffic lights. These sensors are able to continuously provide real-time insights into the movement patterns of all road users within its view. We also care strongly about data privacy, so all video footage is discarded as soon as it is processed by our AI, leaving only the useful anonymous data of how pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles are using the road-space.

Read the full interview on the Royal Academy of Engineering website.