Waycare: the AI platform combatting road traffic fatalities
Rekor Sytems, providers of license plate recognition systems and traffic monitoring solutions, is set to acquire Israeli start-up Waycare Technologies. The $61mn acquisition is set to improve traffic intelligence and build infrastructure for smart cities to benefit future generations.
Waycare looks to solve one of the world’s biggest problems; road traffic fatality prevention. The company does this by leveraging artificial intelligence and predictive analytics for proactive traffic management optimisation.
By drawing from vast amounts of data points to provide actional insights Waycare can provide crash prediction, irregular traffic detection and quick incident identification. The platform integrates data from existing transportation networks and sources like city infrastructure, in-vehicle data, navigation apps, and weather forecasts.
The Waycare platform serves as a tool for agencies to break down data silos, open new channels of communication and strategically manage resources.
Leveraging AI for accident management
In an interview, Waycare CEO and co-founder Noam Maital said the data is synthesized “to create a full holistic picture of what’s happening on the road in real-time.”
“We use all those insights to start building operational tools, based on enabled machine learning and deep learning for real-time traffic operations, incident management and predictive analytics as well.”
Combatting a global issue by leveraging AI, Waycare has been successful since its founding in 2016. Through three rounds the company raised $9.6 million in funding.
Combatting the global issue of traffic accidents
According to the World Health Organisation roughly 1.35 million people are killed globally in car accidents per year. This works out at an average of 3,700 people per day. This urged the Israeli entrepreneur to build a cloud-based software platform that combats these issues.
“We couldn’t quite understand why such a big issue, in terms of sheer impact – approximately 40,000 dying in the US every year – doesn’t have a better solution to date,” said Maital.
“In fact, in the last 40-50 years, we’ve been trying the same type of solutions without any meaningful success. This is in confluence with the introduction of new deep learning and machine learning capabilities that were coming out, as well as platforms that made it more accessible to start playing around with these types of solutions that allow us to start looking at predictive analytics. We thought, ‘how can we approach traffic and incident management in a more predictive manner, and using multiple data sources that were previously not used in terms of typical or traditional means’?” he continued.
Strengthening Rekor’s platform
As a provider of real-time roadway intelligence with the aim to enable informed decisions with greater outcomes, it is clear to see why Rekor were keen to acquire the Israeli start-up.
“With the Waycare acquisition, we are significantly strengthening our footprint and meaningfully enhancing our service offering,” said Robert Berman, president and CEO of Rekor.
“This acquisition accelerates access to new markets and provides us with new vendor relationships to access unique data sources,” added Berman.
By incorporating Waycare’s AI platform, Rekor will be able to improve its service by making roads safer, reducing traffic collisions and improving smart city infrastructure to benefit generations to come