From the Videogame to the Reality: Interactive System for Road Safety

Abstract

The rapid growth of urban centers, the emerging technologies and the demand for new services by the increasing population introduce a new challenge: going towards smart cities. This concept has taken hold among the political, economic, social, academic, environmental and civil sectors, and several initiatives leads to the integration of infrastructure, technology and services for citizens. In this context, road safety and traffic efficiency became in key issues to be solved. New mechanisms are needed in order to reduce accidents and its mortality rate, also requirements such as the optimization of the urban mobility and municipal planning, fuel consumption and greenhouse gases emissions reduction and real-time systems that provide dynamic and effective information to travelers. This article describes two (2) approaches that contribute efficiently to the traffic safety problem: video games used as serious games and vehicular applications for intelligent transportation systems. Both approaches aims to reduce collisions and required a highly technological baseline to be implemented (e.g. telematic and computer systems, artificial intelligence, image processing and 3D modeling).