Intertraffic Innovation Award winners announced

As part of the opening ceremony for Intertraffic Amsterdam today (March 20), Peter van der Knaap, CEO of SWOV and chairman of the Intertraffic Innovation Award Jury, took the stage to announce the much-anticipated winners of the biennial awards – in total five category winners and one overall winner were announced.

The overall winner, chosen from a total of 53 entrants by an expert jury, was revealed as Germany’s ParkNow, which led the field with its On-Street Parking Information (OSPI) system, developed in collaboration with BMW (winners pictured below). 

OSPI, which also won in its category Smart Mobility, is able to predict the likelihood of a driver finding a space in a particular area of a city, thanks to data from historic traffic flows, parking meters and other apps. It can then navigate directly to the best parking area and also offers a seamless payment system. The jury was particularly impressed with the level of system integration into the dashboard of the vehicle, doing away with the need for running separate smartphone apps – a point that was judged not only to improve efficiency and convenience but also, importantly, safety.

Commenting on the win jury member Ben Rutten, of Eindhoven University of Technology, said, “BMW and ParkNow’s OSPI will result in a hassle-free last mile, as well as reducing distances driven, resulting in cleaner cities and less congested roads. Furthermore, the platform is to a great extent scalable to other car brands, although BMW will also keep parts of it undisclosed as a uniquely part of the BMW proposition.” 

The winner in the Traffic Management category was CITIX 3D by Eco-Counter, from Canada. This technology, which has been developed over five years, impressed the panel particularly due to the fact that it delivers high levels of accuracy in detecting pedestrians, bicycles and cars, while also being extremely easy to set up. 

In the Safety category Sernis Technologic Solutions emerged victorious with their SR-90 intelligent road stud system. The studs, which are designed to be installed in multiples, are linked to a speed-detection system, and automatically rise above the road surface level and light up when a speeding vehicle is detected. The faster the car is going, the higher the studs are raised, although there is never any risk of damage to the car. If a car is going below the speed limit the studs remain beneath the road surface. “This is a truly innovative concept for intelligent physical speed reduction of motorized vehicles in controlled speed zones,” said van der Knaap.

A new solution from startup ParkHere won the Parking category. The jury agreed that the Self-Powered Parking Sensor represented a totally new way design such technology. It is a strip that is embedded in the roadway and gets its power from harvesting the energy of vehicles driving over it. Processing of data is carried out at a nearby base station, which forwards the information to a cloud sever. 

In a strong and varied field, CROSS Zlin’s OptiWIM solution stood out as the winner in the infrastructure category for its precision, ease of replacement and future-proofing. While weigh-in-motion technology is not, in itself, new, OptiWIM combines several world firsts: it is free-flow capable and accurate to 3% (even in free-flow); temperature compensated; and RF immune.