US Patent Office Awards GridMatrix Patent for AI Near Miss Detection
San Francisco — April 11th, 2024: The US Patent Office has awarded GridMatrix US Patent #11,955,001 B2 “Traffic Near Miss Collision Detection”. The patent recognizes GridMatrix’s pioneering work in artificial intelligence, machine vision, cloud computing, and safety. It covers the identification of near miss incidents between multiple combinations of road user including vehicles and other vehicles, vehicles and pedestrians, and vehicles and cyclists.
According to the US Department of Transportation, 370,000 people have died in transportation accidents in the last decade from 2011–2020. In 2021 alone, 42,939 were killed in motor vehicle crashes, 7,388 of whom were pedestrians. To put those numbers into perspective, the number of roadway fatalities from 2011–2020 is approximately equivalent to the number of Americans lost in World War II. The annual number of fatalities in 2021 is between those from the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
“Roadway deaths are a preventable, and unfortunately are a poorly understood public health crisis,” said Nicholas D’Andre, GridMatrix’s CEO. “It’s a problem that feels far away until its touched your life or family, and then all of the sudden you wonder why more isn’t being done about it. I’m very proud that GridMatrix is doing something about it. The official recognition of our team’s work applying emerging technologies to one of the hardest challenges facing our communities is great, but more importantly it’s meant to be used. The beauty of the solution is American communities can get the best roadway safety technology available using the cameras they already operate. It turns on like a light switch.”
“We hear over and over again from communities across the US that there isn’t money available for safety until someone dies,” said Kyle Pickett, GridMatrix’s Government Affairs Director. “This is a tool that gives them actionable data to say “these are locations where an accident is waiting to happen, let’s take action to prevent them from happening” and get the resources they need to make it happen.”
“This is a first-of-its-kind solution” said Eric Valasek, GridMatrix’s VP of Engineering. “Accurately and reliably detecting complex interactions like a near miss using existing hardware is already a big challenge. Doing it in real-time using cloud-based algorithm processing was an additional problem to solve. The work is ultimately a foundation for what’s to come — pretty soon we’ll be able to build decision support tools for American communities that leverage AI and make high confidence predictions about how the physical alteration of an intersection will impact the probability of a collision.”
About GridMatrix
GridMatrix’s award winning solution for real-time infrastructure optimization combines edge data from existing roadway sensors and cloud-based data sources to efficiently resolve congestion, emission, and safety challenges. GridMatrix’s software is universally compatible with both existing sensors such as cameras, radar, and loops, as well as emerging sensing technologies such as LiDAR. The companies solutions operate in more than 15 locations across the US. The Intelligent Transportation Society of America has recognized GridMatrix’s software as a leading new solution for sustainable and resilient infrastructure. You can read more about GridMatrix’s work in Traffic Technology Today, ITS Magazine, and Smart Cities World.
Media Contact
Kyle Pickett // kpickett@gridmatrix.com // 650.887.4854
