Automation of highways through the eyes of an IT person
I have long wanted to tell in a simple and accessible way about building intelligent transport systems. Because it seems to me that this topic is not well disclosed in Russian, and Russian specialists in this field can be counted on the fingers. I cannot relate myself to the number of these specialists, as I have just begun to understand the problem. But that is why it is interesting for me to write about it. I want to talk about how the industry lives now, what technologies and means of solving transport problems exist in general, what nuances and interesting features exist in this area. I want to write something that I myself so much wanted to read at least a year ago, when there was absolutely nothing around. If you find something naive or completely obvious, do not judge strictly. For me, this naivety is bread and salt. Only this naivety, multiplied by a rich imagination, helps to build in imagination a detailed model of the future. Which with some knowledge in UML and BPML turns into project documentation.
Since we have to go some way together, let me introduce myself. My name is Aleksey. By specialty I am a systems engineer, professional system administrator. He graduated from a specialized university in 1999, worked for 6 years as a system engineer, then 3 years specialized in IT management, and then found himself in the role of business analyst.
When I was offered to try my hand at automating, I did not immediately agree. More precisely, internally I agreed immediately, but outwardly I did not agree for some time for the sake of appearance. He stayed for several months, after which he quit a major integrator, where he had previously worked on information security projects and got a job in a small software company engaged in developing software for highways for an analyst position.
')
I must say, colleagues, that this work is just a paradise for fans of the game Sim City and Transport Tycoon. Where else would you have the opportunity to build a transportation system for the whole city? And not on the computer screen, but alive.
Of course, not everything in this industry is rosy and beautiful. Especially in our country. Further on the problems.
First of all, builders reign in the industry. These harsh guys very cleverly draw junctions and stick traffic lights, and then they cast it all in concrete and metal. It turns out beautifully and in a modern way. The customer's eye is happy, and it is pleasant for motorists to drive under the luminous boards and feel like a part of Europe. Only one thing darkens the heavens on the horizon. This is a small trifle, a trifle in general, which consists in the fact that all this machinery does not work at all. That is, it does not perform the function of organizing traffic. No, I do not argue, the outcome is always better than its absence. And the more we have junctions, the easier it will be to move along the capital's roads. But here a lot of money that is invested in the equipment of the junction, mostly spent in vain. Of course, there are exceptions here. I am saying this so that I will not be thrown into the face with wonderful projects that are really wonderful, and I know some of them. But they do not make the weather in the industry at all and do not change the average temperature in the hospital.
Here are all Muscovites and passing citizens driving around the Moscow Ring Road. The road is equipped with excellent scoreboards and bright signs of variable information. Board and signs usually show the same thing. Gradually, drivers stopped paying attention to these signs as a source of traffic information. You can snort and swear for a long time, but now I know that if the creators of this system on the Moscow Ring Road were at least seven spans in their foreheads, they still couldn’t do anything worthwhile. Because the spherical horse in a vacuum, which is the Moscow Ring Road in the city, remains an excellent and useless abstraction without the support of radial streets.
Or here is the third transport ring. Remarkable equipment of a world famous company, excellent dispatching rooms. And almost completely manual control. And not because they do not know how. And it's just another spherical horse in a vacuum, another transport ring suspended in an information void.
The situation on radii is slightly better, which, as an experiment, is equipped with smart traffic lights. There sometimes even optimization of traffic flows occurs, and rare witnesses even reported the presence of a green wave. But as you know, there are no miracles in the ferrous metallurgy, and in the permanent traffic jam mode, excellent algorithms for coordinated control of traffic lights on the highway do not work, but completely different algorithms that are implemented in just a couple of three unfortunate cities, which, like Moscow, are suffocating car jams. These algorithms begin to carefully scatter the congestion from its end to the beginning. No person here can not cope, only an intricate algorithm. Traffic control in conditions of congestion is the real art of programming, the most complex adaptive schemes tied to the present, past and future at the same time and not tolerating human intervention. The electronic “brain” of such a system receives information from hundreds of detectors in all essential directions, as well as from adjacent systems. And all this in order for motorists to spend 30% less time in traffic.
Specialists accompanying one of the control systems for traffic lights on the radial highway, praised that they can accurately determine those intersections that are operated by traffic police officers in manual mode. A sign of such control is a cork growing faster than usual. No matter how hard the traffic police officers tried to improve the situation, they could not do it, despite all their experience in such matters. Because no one can analyze so many factors at the same time and make the right decision. For this, in general, and created specialized computer systems. Another thing is that in our realities, these systems often remain blind and deaf, without sensors and detectors, because the builders hung the sensors at all in the wrong place. And where it is necessary - they did not hang them, because this is not their section, but the section of a completely different company, which they didn’t say about sensors ... And how can a deaf and blind system help a person, except to confuse him? So operators turn off smart algorithms and take control of all objects into their callous hands. They look through the surveillance cameras on the road and scatter the streams manually.
As you can see, colleagues, the situation in the industry is rather dense. If such a situation were in the financial sector, then half of the chief accountants would already be sitting in places not so remote, there would be no banks at all, and barter would flourish everywhere. But we have a lot of specialists in accounting, there are also all sorts of smart programs, and it would not occur to anyone to leave such a program without initial data. But this is the result of the evolutionary development of the industry, multiplied by the harsh business need and tight government control.
In the meantime, here is the second problem, which is a consequence of the first. Western partners, knowing our customs, do not behave in the most correct way. They do not even try to explain or tell anything about their decisions. The technical details of their products remain a mystery, they go to our market with a full complement of hardware, software and turnkey installation services. And often at a significantly inflated price. Yes, and it is difficult to judge them, if the construction work does not provide for any development or any decent documentation of software. I’m not talking about the “edge” of pricing during road construction. This is a separate, very sensitive topic, which I really would not like to discuss in the framework of this purely technical blog.
Actually, in the same way there is no quality control of the installed software. All too often, the unfortunate dispatchers are set up with hastily translated from foreign languages ​​interfaces focused on unknown business processes and alien production relations. It is also good if you come up with the development of “someone else’s shoulder” not much changed by our “Kulibins”, retaining some aesthetics of interfaces and ergonomic solutions, honed by foreign users. More often, these are hastily screwed forms with minimal functionality. for example, a user must choose a surveillance camera from the drop-down list, constantly missing the correct camera and losing valuable time during an accident. The time that can cost someone life, seriously speaking.
Next time we will talk about traffic jams, about traffic lights and how you can build a modern transport infrastructure in terms of software.
Since we have to go some way together, let me introduce myself. My name is Aleksey. By specialty I am a systems engineer, professional system administrator. He graduated from a specialized university in 1999, worked for 6 years as a system engineer, then 3 years specialized in IT management, and then found himself in the role of business analyst.
When I was offered to try my hand at automating, I did not immediately agree. More precisely, internally I agreed immediately, but outwardly I did not agree for some time for the sake of appearance. He stayed for several months, after which he quit a major integrator, where he had previously worked on information security projects and got a job in a small software company engaged in developing software for highways for an analyst position.
')
I must say, colleagues, that this work is just a paradise for fans of the game Sim City and Transport Tycoon. Where else would you have the opportunity to build a transportation system for the whole city? And not on the computer screen, but alive.
Of course, not everything in this industry is rosy and beautiful. Especially in our country. Further on the problems.
First of all, builders reign in the industry. These harsh guys very cleverly draw junctions and stick traffic lights, and then they cast it all in concrete and metal. It turns out beautifully and in a modern way. The customer's eye is happy, and it is pleasant for motorists to drive under the luminous boards and feel like a part of Europe. Only one thing darkens the heavens on the horizon. This is a small trifle, a trifle in general, which consists in the fact that all this machinery does not work at all. That is, it does not perform the function of organizing traffic. No, I do not argue, the outcome is always better than its absence. And the more we have junctions, the easier it will be to move along the capital's roads. But here a lot of money that is invested in the equipment of the junction, mostly spent in vain. Of course, there are exceptions here. I am saying this so that I will not be thrown into the face with wonderful projects that are really wonderful, and I know some of them. But they do not make the weather in the industry at all and do not change the average temperature in the hospital.
Here are all Muscovites and passing citizens driving around the Moscow Ring Road. The road is equipped with excellent scoreboards and bright signs of variable information. Board and signs usually show the same thing. Gradually, drivers stopped paying attention to these signs as a source of traffic information. You can snort and swear for a long time, but now I know that if the creators of this system on the Moscow Ring Road were at least seven spans in their foreheads, they still couldn’t do anything worthwhile. Because the spherical horse in a vacuum, which is the Moscow Ring Road in the city, remains an excellent and useless abstraction without the support of radial streets.
Or here is the third transport ring. Remarkable equipment of a world famous company, excellent dispatching rooms. And almost completely manual control. And not because they do not know how. And it's just another spherical horse in a vacuum, another transport ring suspended in an information void.
The situation on radii is slightly better, which, as an experiment, is equipped with smart traffic lights. There sometimes even optimization of traffic flows occurs, and rare witnesses even reported the presence of a green wave. But as you know, there are no miracles in the ferrous metallurgy, and in the permanent traffic jam mode, excellent algorithms for coordinated control of traffic lights on the highway do not work, but completely different algorithms that are implemented in just a couple of three unfortunate cities, which, like Moscow, are suffocating car jams. These algorithms begin to carefully scatter the congestion from its end to the beginning. No person here can not cope, only an intricate algorithm. Traffic control in conditions of congestion is the real art of programming, the most complex adaptive schemes tied to the present, past and future at the same time and not tolerating human intervention. The electronic “brain” of such a system receives information from hundreds of detectors in all essential directions, as well as from adjacent systems. And all this in order for motorists to spend 30% less time in traffic.
Specialists accompanying one of the control systems for traffic lights on the radial highway, praised that they can accurately determine those intersections that are operated by traffic police officers in manual mode. A sign of such control is a cork growing faster than usual. No matter how hard the traffic police officers tried to improve the situation, they could not do it, despite all their experience in such matters. Because no one can analyze so many factors at the same time and make the right decision. For this, in general, and created specialized computer systems. Another thing is that in our realities, these systems often remain blind and deaf, without sensors and detectors, because the builders hung the sensors at all in the wrong place. And where it is necessary - they did not hang them, because this is not their section, but the section of a completely different company, which they didn’t say about sensors ... And how can a deaf and blind system help a person, except to confuse him? So operators turn off smart algorithms and take control of all objects into their callous hands. They look through the surveillance cameras on the road and scatter the streams manually.
As you can see, colleagues, the situation in the industry is rather dense. If such a situation were in the financial sector, then half of the chief accountants would already be sitting in places not so remote, there would be no banks at all, and barter would flourish everywhere. But we have a lot of specialists in accounting, there are also all sorts of smart programs, and it would not occur to anyone to leave such a program without initial data. But this is the result of the evolutionary development of the industry, multiplied by the harsh business need and tight government control.
In the meantime, here is the second problem, which is a consequence of the first. Western partners, knowing our customs, do not behave in the most correct way. They do not even try to explain or tell anything about their decisions. The technical details of their products remain a mystery, they go to our market with a full complement of hardware, software and turnkey installation services. And often at a significantly inflated price. Yes, and it is difficult to judge them, if the construction work does not provide for any development or any decent documentation of software. I’m not talking about the “edge” of pricing during road construction. This is a separate, very sensitive topic, which I really would not like to discuss in the framework of this purely technical blog.
Actually, in the same way there is no quality control of the installed software. All too often, the unfortunate dispatchers are set up with hastily translated from foreign languages ​​interfaces focused on unknown business processes and alien production relations. It is also good if you come up with the development of “someone else’s shoulder” not much changed by our “Kulibins”, retaining some aesthetics of interfaces and ergonomic solutions, honed by foreign users. More often, these are hastily screwed forms with minimal functionality. for example, a user must choose a surveillance camera from the drop-down list, constantly missing the correct camera and losing valuable time during an accident. The time that can cost someone life, seriously speaking.
Next time we will talk about traffic jams, about traffic lights and how you can build a modern transport infrastructure in terms of software.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/120670/
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