You’re driving to an important meeting and hit a traffic jam on the main road. You turn off to a side street, hoping to bypass the congestion, but it’s just as bad. Microsoft hopes its new Clearflow technology will help you avoid such nightmares.
On Thursday, the Redmond, Wash.-based company launched the free software at maps.live.com. The technology allows drivers to get alternate route information, not only on main roads but also on side streets, which can make the difference between arriving on time or not.
Sports Events, Weather
Navigation software often acts as if it never met the real world. But Clearflow takes into account variables in the real world — things like sporting events, weather conditions, day of the week, and time of day. Currently, Clearflow is familiar with 72 cities in the U.S. According to Microsoft, the information provided by Clearflow is more accurately tuned to current conditions in those cities, for both main and side roads, than similar software.
To arrive at Clearflow, the software giant said its researchers spent more than five years working with some of the company’s artificial-intelligence scientists. The result is that Clearflow’s proposed routes are reportedly not always the most obvious ones. In some cases, the software suggests the trip might be faster to stay where you are — such as stuck on a crowded highway — because side streets are even more congested as other drivers try that alternative.
According to The New York Times, the project to make navigation software began in 2003 when a Microsoft artificial-intelligence researcher named Eric Horvitz was trying to find a Seattle restaurant. He hit traffic and instructed his in-car navigation device to get him to his destination via side streets.
But the results were worse than his original route. “It was awful,” he told the Times. “Everything seemed…