Echelon Unveils InSight Cognitive Vision Technology To Enhance Safety And Reduce Outdoor Lighting Cost

Echelon Corporation recently unveiled a patent-pending cognitive vision-based technology that can enable a wide range of smart city and smart campus applications. Echelon InSight™ utilizes artificial intelligence in vision-enabled edge devices, optimized for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications. With InSight, traffic data is collected and processed at the edge of the network instead of on a central server, and uses the Lumewave by Echelon® lighting platform to transmit traffic information, reducing response time and improving reliability. This architecture enables faster action in response to changing conditions and minimizes network bandwidth requirements.

The first application of Echelon’s new technology will be to provide traffic-adaptive lighting in Spokane, Washington. The cognitive vision system will be deployed on traffic intersection streetlights where it will analyze traffic flows and automatically adjust light levels to enhance safety while reducing energy consumption and maintenance costs. With InSight, each unit analyzes video streams locally and makes decisions about what light levels to set based on traffic volumes and conditions, triggering higher levels during peak hours and lowering light levels during non-peak hours. The solution leverages Echelon’s industry-leading connected streetlight control system, along with the trend by cities and campuses to upgrade to LED lighting.

LED streetlight conversions typically reduce electricity consumption by 50 percent while maintaining the same or better light levels. Adding Echelon’s connected lighting control system can reduce consumption by an additional 30 to 40 percent by allowing intelligent traffic-adaptive lighting driven by Echelon InSight.

Traditionally, cities have used a wide variety of traffic monitoring systems such as in-ground loops, cameras, radar, or infrared to detect traffic for timing traffic signals. These are typically closed loop systems and provide limited information for traffic signal timing only. Lumewave by Echelon’s traffic adaptive lighting application takes traffic detection one step further by providing direct integration with area street lighting. Additionally, the InSight Cognitive Vision System captures and analyzes traffic patterns right at the camera and then provides traffic volume data to a local gateway or SmartServer to adaptively dim or brighten lights. Critical traffic data is also passed to a Central Management System via Lumewave by Echelon network.

In the future, additional InSight applications will offer more traffic analytics, including vehicle classification and vehicle speed maps, signal timing functions, and solutions to other related problems, like parking.

For more information: http://www.echelon.com