10. Transportation Computing: “Cloud Traffic Control”

The new cyber technological culture of transport control based on virtual road signs and streetlight signals on the screen of the car is the future of humanity. A cyber physical system (CPS) of smart cloud traffic control, which realizes the abovementioned culture, is proposed; it is characterized by the presence of digitized regulatory rules, vehicles, and infrastructure components, and also accurate monitoring, active cloud streetlight-free cyber control of road users and traffic lights, and automatic output of operational regulatory actions (virtual traffic signs and traffic signals) to monitor each vehicle. The main components of the cyber physical system are infrastructure, road users, and rules with digital representations in cyberspace to realize a route, based on digital monitoring and cloud–mobile control. We offer innovative services that implement digital monitoring and cloud control as a scalable prototype of a global system that uses the following technology: precise positioning of moving and stationary objects, digital cartography, cyber physical systems and the Internet of Things, advanced wireless communications, and big data analytics. The basic idea is to improve the quality and safety of traffic through the implementation of metric regulation of traffic, based on digital monitoring and active cloud cyber control, and also the use of intelligent virtual traffic lights and signs, providing opportunities to significantly improve the comfort of a car trip and to reduce overheads in time and costs of route execution. The components of the implementation of global cloud traffic control services are as follows. (1) The term “smart” defines a process or phenomenon associated with network interaction of the addressable system components in time and space between themselves and the environment, based on self-learning technologies to achieve their goals. (2) A smart cyber physical system is a set of communicatively network-connected addressable virtual and real components in a digitized metric space with features of adequate physical monitoring, optimal cloud control, and self-learning in real time to achieve goals. (3) The Internet of Things is a structure of cyber physical systems, combining centers of large data, knowledge, services, and applications aimed at monitoring and controlling smart processes and phenomena in a digitized physical space by using sensors–actuators to provide high standards of living and save the planet’s environment. (4) Computing is a branch of knowledge, focused on research, design, and application of systems, networks, and cloud–mobile services for monitoring and control of cyber physical processes and phenomena. The development of computing, the main function of which is cyber control, should only be considered in conjunction with the real or physical world, a part of which is humanity. There is interaction between the real and virtual worlds: humanity always poorly manages the real world and creates computing as his assistant. As a perfect mechanism, computing takes control of technological processes for humanity. (5) The market feasibility of global cloud services for traffic control without a physical infrastructure, traffic lights, and road signs is at least US$100 billion. The economic effect of the transfer of road infrastructure to cyberspace, including vehicle license plates, is US$500 billion a year.