CORDIS

TIMON project (www.timon-project.eu) aims to develop a cooperative open web-based platform and mobile application, in order to deliver real-time information and services to all users of the transport ecosystem – drivers, vulnerable road users, and businesses.
The persisting problems related to congestion make cities the principal source of CO2 and other emissions. The traffic accidents, where human factor is the predominant cause of congestion, increase travel time and the air pollution. TIMON project proposes using an cloud-based platform system that consumes data from the users (cars, pedestrians, cyclists), open and closed data and V2X hybrid communications (cars, motorbikes, infrastructure), process it using artificial intelligence and provides real-time and planning services to the users through a smartphone APP. This solution produces a cooperative ecosystem by connecting people, vehicles, infrastructure and businesses. Two pilots have been deployed within the project, with satisfactory results, in Helmond (the Netherlands) and Ljubljana (Slovenia). TIMON has achieved great success in the city of Ljubljana with 238 end users that have provided very useful feedback and have been used to improve and fine-tune the final system.

Now that TIMON project has come to an end a list of the main results achieved are provided now. An open platform and a mobile APP (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.timon.app) have been developed to provide the envisaged ITS services in TIMON. This open platform is based on cloud systems and uses a Real-Time data distribution solution to provide real time alert for drivers and VRUs. The mobile APP uses a self-deployed Maps and Navigation SDK that provides flexibility on the maps and the navigation engine used. The services deployed in TIMON can be classifed as:
- Alerting services: these services provide Real-Time alerts during the navigation of the different users and are delivered through the mobile APP developed in the project. These services are: Collision Alert, Emergency Vehicle Approaching and Road hazard warning.
- Planning services: these services can be used in advance to plan a route, or check the traffic state at a particular place or at some point in time. The main Planning services are: Vehicle Density Awareness, Dynamic Route re-planning for cyclists, Dynamic Route re-planning applied to drivers, - Multimodal Dynamic commuter service, Enhanced real time traffic information API, TIMON collaborative ecosystem.

The TIMON consortium have decided to keep alive the following services due to the good feedback received after the project end. These services are:
- Road hazard service: ingesting open and closed data, and data from the users, TIMON can provide road hazards for drivers and cyclists through the smartphone APP.
- Dynamic routing service applied to drivers and cyclists: a Multi Modal Route Planning system that provides dynamic routes for drivers, VRUs and public transport users.
- Real time traffic and traffic state prediction system: provides the traffic density and the traffic predictions in Ljubljana for a 15, 30, 45 and 60 minute horizon.

TIMON has been fully integrated, tested and piloted using real users in the city of Ljubljana (Slovenia). During the project lifetime, the TIMON consortium has been actively participating in external events and promoting the results already achieved in TIMON to the external world. TIMON has been presented in several conferences and infodays and several engagement campaigns have been done to engage real users in Ljubljana and other european countries.

Here are the main advances beyond the state of the art:
- Hybrid Networks: The hybrid communication system aims to create a unified cooperative ITS system through the use of the complementary technologies ITS-G5 and LTE. Various methods have been implemented to enable the cooperation of both technologies in order to improve QoS requirements of ITS applications.
- Artificial Intelligence: Modifications on a fuzzy rule based algorithm to deal with imbalanced traffic data have been done to improve the performance and quality of the traffic prediction models. This helps to provide better traffic information.
Research and implementation of an evolutionary algorithm to improve the quality of the routes depending on user preferences and the type of user, using also the current state of traffic and the congestion prediction.
- Cooperative Positioning: It is focussed on improving the accuracy of positioning relying on GNSS signals. Two different positioning techniques have been tested in real environment with very promising results: an enhanced positioning based on inertial measurements and a design for cooperative positioning, using Ultra Wide Band nodes. Both of them with promising results.
- Map- and Navigation Application Development Kit: The objective of the developments is to provide a service independent mapping and navigation modules. The newly developed SDK provides an intermediate layer between the application and the data providers, giving the freedom of using common or standard map and routing services as opposed to any navigation or mapping software.

The project results have had a direct impact on different aspects related to transport and mobility of people, TIMON improved the safety levels of road transport, increasing the visibility of the VRUs to reduce the number of crashes by 15%-20%, using alerting services for drivers and VRU. Improving transport efficiency, by offering efficient and cost effective planning services. These services provide traffic state predictions and a multimodal routing system that contributes to reduce congestion by 12%-20%; increase of flexibility, by providing alternative options to drivers in case of traffic disruptions fusing the alerting and planning services; and in sustainability, by cutting down GHG and other pollutant emissions by 10% thanks to the low cost emmission routes provided by the multi-modal routing system.