Bengaluru’s vehicular traffic is as iconic as its tech boom. The gridlock has inspired countless memes, provoked endless complaints and criticism, and turned into an urban nightmare, highlighting the citizens’ frustration. But there’s another story unfolding on the other side. The city’s traffic police, who ease the daily mess, relentlessly work to manage Bengaluru’s most persistent problem.
Surprisingly, the engineer-turned-police commissioner embraces tech, especially AI, to manage traffic, utilising the city’s talent pool.
A Day in the Life of Anucheth
The time leading up to meeting JCP M N Anucheth at the Bengaluru Traffic Centre was nothing short of severe anticipation and jitters about how a cop would respond when questioned about the solutions taken by authorities that have been troubling daily commuters’ lives. But his answers are backed by stats and tech.
During his interview with AIM, Anucheth, a key figure on Bengaluru Traffic’s social media, advocates for traffic awareness and believes social media is a powerful tool for understanding real-time issues and problems.
“We want to leverage the power of social media,” he said while trying to address the real problems. Being a champion for traffic awareness is one thing, but having an AI avatar represent you is quite another! Anucheth shares that all he has to do is type what he wants to say, and his AI avatar brings his words to life with its voice.
The department uses AI at signals using a proprietary tool developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). “I think AI-based traffic management is more challenging. You can’t do predictive-based analysis. Rather, you have to do it in real time, which has to be instantaneous,” Anucheth said in an exclusive interaction with AIM.
These advancements have been made possible through partnerships with emerging startups in the city. These collaborations are vital for scaling tech and AI integration in intelligent traffic management in Bengaluru. Anucheth mentions that he engages in discussions with different companies every day to implement innovative solutions.
They have partnered with startups to offer varied services, including drone technologies, AI avatars, and traffic management platforms such as ASTraM (actionable intelligence for sustainable traffic management), which is their big data platform that leverages AI to help track real-time map data and assist police in sharing live data.
“What we find is that the younger startups have really good talent, and they’re really hungry for finding solutions, and they’re very eager. So I think that’s something really nice to work with,” said Anucheth, who doesn’t believe that the size of a company defines its ability to provide solutions. “Nothing against big tech companies. I think our experience has been that we can’t work with them to give tailor-made solutions for us.”
Traffic Monitoring Room at the Traffic Management Centre, Bengaluru. (The second screen from the right is from their ASTraM platform for live details on congestion and other statistics.)
Interestingly, we caught up with Anucheth a few weeks before New Year’s Eve, which witnessed its fair share of shenanigans during midnight revelry this year. But when asked about how they would face this day, he did not instruct anybody on what to do but rather spoke of how everybody should have a good time responsibly.
He believed that one should not restrict the actions of others while simultaneously advocating responsible conduct.
Bengaluru in the Future
Like an AI tech leader, Anucheth is clear and optimistic about Bengaluru’s new initiatives. Unlike many tech leaders, he wasn’t hesitant to discuss them openly.
With 9,000 cameras deployed across the city for crime prevention and law and order maintenance, the team is considering using these safety cameras to create an AI engine for violation detection, traffic management, and traffic counting.
“Imagine if I could get the traffic out at each junction. I would know exactly how traffic is moving in Bangalore. In the next couple of years, the whole idea is to move towards a digital twin for the city,” he said
Other initiatives involve using body-worn cameras at crime scenes to annotate observations with the assistance of an LLM, resembling a ‘digital panchnama.’ Additionally, the department is developing LLMs for FIRs to extract insights from previous cases and implementing AI in 112 emergency centres to communicate with individuals in various languages, including foreign tongues.
While these initiatives are at play, Anucheth is wary of the humongous task of managing vehicular traffic that is witnessing a geometric progression when the infrastructure is growing only at an arithmetic progression rate. The city’s vehicle population is expected to touch 1.2 crores in Bengaluru, a figure that doubled in 10 years.
However, he did not hesitate to acknowledge that AI’s full usage is only practical if the infrastructure is improved. “If infrastructure is not in place, no amount of AI is going to solve the bottleneck. It has to be eased through infrastructural development, which needs to improve,” he said.
On a lighter note, as we conclude, Anucheth is aware of how the city has been at the receiving end of traffic jokes and is quite open to criticism. “Traffic is not as bad as it is perceived to be. Certainly, we can do much better. But we are trying our best,” he assured.
