Grant: Alliance Grants

As the world becomes increasingly connected through the ubiquitous deployment of telecommunication infrastructure, information and communication technologies (ICT) are advancing at a quick pace to improve the well-being of humankind. With the global trend of urbanization, it becomes critical to leverage ICT to make cities smarter and more sustainable, especially in the transportation sectors due to their large carbon footprints and big impacts on citizens' everyday life. In this project, we team up with TELUS to develop technological innovations that will exploit advances in artificial intelligence, digital media and communications for smart cities, focusing on solutions for intelligent transportation. In particular, leveraging advances in artificial intelligence (AI), we shall develop innovative solutions for collaborative autonomous driving, detection of road conditions, deteriorations and hazards, detection of available street parking, and detection and interpretation of traffic and parking signs, aiming at increased accuracy in decision making of autonomous vehicles and improved driving conditions for human-driven and autonomous vehicles, traffic reduction and decreased pollution. These solutions will be built upon an emerging advanced network computing infrastructure based on intelligent collaboration of multiple levels of edge and cloud computing. We shall also develop novel solutions that make such an intelligent infrastructure efficient, secure and adaptable. TELUS is committed to providing substantial financial and human resources, as well as strategic guidance, to make this project a success not only in knowledge generation but in opening new business opportunities. The commercialization of the outcomes of this project will significantly boost the Canadian economy, particularly in the transportation and ICT sectors, which together account for close to 10% of the Canadian GDP. The continued growth of these sectors requires a substantial injection of Highly Trained Personnel (HQP) that is trained in the latest AI techniques, which is another important outcome of this project.