The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) is allocating $15 million in federal funding for small businesses to use with artificial intelligence (AI) systems, and create new applications in the U.S. transportation sector.
The Transportation's Small Business Innovative Research Program, announced Friday, will spearhead the Complete Streets AI initiative to bring AI and machine learning solutions to transportation infrastructure.
The program aims to help state and local governments use decision-support tools to help design and deploy a network of Complete Streets.
Bridging existing data gaps is a key feature of this initiative, with some areas of the U.S. lacking the necessary traffic or sidewalk data to improve local infrastructure.
“Innovation in the AI and transportation sector is happening at unprecedented speed and has the potential to address some of our most pressing transportation challenges,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a statement. “This funding supports our country’s small businesses and startups to harness cutting-edge technologies, deploy them in local communities, and make our streets safer.”
Ten Phase 1 contracts will be awarded to small businesses looking to leverage automated data analytics to develop Complete Streets across the country.
The USDOT is looking to include systems operating on the internet-=of-things, satellite, aerial or street-level videography, and computer vision.
The USDOT expects applicants to generate interactive maps and other visualizations to better understand current street and traffic conditions, as well as citizen mobility. The platforms developed by small businesses should also be suitable for users in the private sector, non-profit and academic industries.
“Complete Streets are easier to plan with more complete data,” Robert Hampshire, principal deputy assistant secretary for research and technology and chief science officer, said in the press release. “This is a bold effort to build out that data along with the technology platforms that make it easy to use.”
The deadline for pre-solicitation dates is March 1.
