In the near future, we will see autonomous e-vehicles which self-navigate themselves based on the traffic flow of streets. Under this circumstance, an open network platform is how the vehicles should be navigated such that they can avoid /mitigate traffic congestion on the streets. This problem can’t be solved using classic network routing problems as the traffic pattern of vehicles is oblivious (unknown) or highly stochastic. We have created novel routing techniques to solve this problem. The theories behind this technique have been recently published by our team in a book published by MIT press. Our product provides a smarter navigation experience with real-time smart grid routing analytics for driverless cars to disperse traffic in the most beneficial way for society.
A smart city is an urban development vision to integrate multiple information and communication technologies in a secure fashion to manage a city’s assets including transportation systems, power grids, distributed sensor networks, water supply networks, and other community services. Our reliance on these complex networks as global platforms for sustainable cities and societies as well as shortage of global nonrenewable energy sources has raised emerging concerns regarding the optimal and secure operation of these large-scale networks. As many challenging network optimization problems are raised by the transition to smarter cities, we need to develop more effective and flexible optimization tools than what already exist in the literature. We’ve designed oblivious network routing as a versatile tool that well matches the types of network optimization problems that face us when developing modern cities. In fact, in our book published by MIT Press in 2015, we thoroughly addressed the recently developed theories behind the oblivious network design and explained why it can revolutionize our approach to solve real-world large-scale network optimization problems that emerge frequently in the development of smarter cities. For example, one of the fundamental transitions to a smarter city is to have smart power grids. There has been a growing trend in the power systems from a centralized producer-driven grid to a smarter interactive customer-driven network. This requirement compels a new way of power routing for a more distributed and efficient power system performance. Furthermore, there are many oblivious network optimization problems in Distributed Sensor Networks (DNS) which facilitate the operation of different infrastructures in a city including public safety departments, transportation systems, and water supply networks to operate more efficiently and with higher quality.