Mobile Millennium - Participatory Traffic Estimation Using Mobile Phones

This position paper describes how the mobile internet is changing the face of the transportation cyberphysical system at a rapid pace and what impact this has on urban travel. In the last five years, cellular phone technology has leapfrogged several attempts to construct dedicated infrastructure systems to monitor traffic. Today, GPS equipped smartphones are progressively morphing into a ubiquitous traffic monitoring system where users contribute and receive traffic information in real time. Mobile Millennium is a pilot project of such a technology which allows the general public with supported devices to participate. Its relevance for urban traffic and travel in urban environments is of specific interest, since it potentially will be able to unveil traffic patterns previously unobserved with dedicated monitoring infrastructure.