Developed by Siemens Mobility in collaboration with Transport for London and supported by the University of Southampton, FUSION is a key part of London’s Real-Time Optimiser (RTO) system, which will provide a completely new way of managing roads across the city, revolutionising the system that has been keeping London moving for over 30 years.
The new FUSION system uses richer data sources from a variety of transport modes, including data from connected vehicles and buses. With flexible, policy-driven adaption techniques, FUSION improves on the SCOOT philosophy of minimising vehicle delay and stops, by optimising signalised junctions and pedestrian crossings based on all road users’ needs.
FUSION enables all modes of transport to be modelled and optimised in a way that responds to the challenges that cities such as London face, such as cleaning up toxic air, making walking and cycling easier and safer and delivering a reliable and sustainable public transport system.
The system is set to enter operation over the coming weeks, where it will control a number of ‘living laboratory’ trial sites in London. This will allow Siemens Mobility to test increasingly complex functionality and verify its enhanced performance at existing traffic intersections in a live environment.
Wilke Reints, Managing Director of Siemens Mobility’s Intelligent Traffic Systems business in the UK, said: “This trial marks a major milestone in the development of this ground-breaking traffic management solution, and I know its progress will be followed closely by industry colleagues around the world. Whilst London is using our hosted UTC solution for the first time to provide FUSION with connectivity to the street, the system is designed to work with a range of UTC systems. Although this is just the first manifestation of the new system, we are enormously excited by its potential and the degree of control that it will give transport authorities.”