DETROIT /PRNewswire/ -- Industry-leading traffic information company Inrix Inc. unveiled the Inrix Dust Network, the "first nationwide traffic service" to go beyond the limitations of road sensors and provide accurate real-time and predictive traffic speed and flow information for major freeways, highways, arterials, and side streets in every major metropolitan area in the U.S.
The Inrix Dust Network represents a traffic technology breakthrough that improves the accuracy, quality, and coverage of traffic information and provides businesses, government agencies, and consumers with the information they need to avoid gridlock and save time and money. It works by combining anonymous, real-time GPS probe data from more than 500,000 commercial fleet, delivery, and taxi vehicles across the U.S. with other real-time traffic-flow information and hundreds of market-specific criteria that affect traffic, such as construction and road closures, real-time incidents, sporting events, weather forecasts, and school schedules, greatly expanding traffic coverage and improving accuracy well beyond any other traffic service on the market today.
Inrix is the "first company to successfully transform a large volume of anonymous real-time GPS vehicle probe data into nationwide traffic information." Only Inrix's proprietary Traffic Fusion Engine incorporates the power of advanced Bayesian analytics to combine GPS probe data with hundreds of other market-specific data sources, enabling accurate, real-time, and predictive traffic information and broad coverage.
"Until now, the biggest obstacle to delivering useful and relevant traffic-flow information to the market has been the extremely limited coverage of road sensor networks," said Inrix president and CEO Bryan Mistele. "The Inrix Dust Network overcomes these challenges with a revolutionary new approach, making expensive, environmentally obtrusive, and often unreliable road sensor networks obsolete."
Inrix provides businesses and regional departments of transportation agencies with real-time traffic-incident information for 138 metropolitan markets, as well as real-time traffic-speed and -flow information for more than 30 markets across the country, making Inrix a leader in traffic-flow coverage. Inrix will continue rolling out its Dust Network in the U.S. and will provide real-time flow information for more than 50 markets by the end of the year. This represents more than 35,000 miles of coverage on freeways, highways, arterials, and side streets—more than seven times the coverage of existing road sensor networks.
Although some traffic solutions offer only highway-level coverage and are dependent on expensive and often unreliable road sensor networks for information, the Inrix Dust Network provides high-quality, real-time, and predictive traffic information in markets where accurate traffic data was not previously available, such as Miami, Las Vegas, New York, Tampa, San Antonio, and Providence. Extensive recent ground-truth testing of the Inrix Dust Network has shown an 8–15% accuracy advantage over traditional embedded road sensor systems.
In April 2005, Inrix was the first company to spin out technology as part of Microsoft's IP Ventures Program, exclusively licensing real-time and predictive traffic technology initially developed by leading scientists and researchers at Microsoft Research.
In a little over a year, Inrix has significantly enhanced the technology and produced real-time and predictive traffic solutions for the market; signed strategic partnerships with mapping and traffic information companies, such as Tele Atlas, Clear Channel, and Telcontar; and started providing traffic information to more than 20 leading companies in the Web, wireless, portable navigation, broadcast, and public sectors.
"Inrix continues making improvements to technology they first licensed from Microsoft Research," said Marshall Phelps, corporate vice president, Microsoft Intellectual Property & Licensing. "We are thrilled to partner with emerging companies like Inrix, who can bring research projects like this to consumers, especially given this technology's ability to help all those who try to navigate congested roadways."
Inrix separately announced the completion of an oversubscribed $10 million round of Series B funding, led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from existing investors Venrock Associates and August Capital.
About Inrix
Founded in July 2004 by former Microsoft executives Bryan Mistele and Craig Chapman, Inrix delivers nationwide access to the most advanced and reliable real-time and predictive traffic information available today, providing industry partners and customers with high-quality, accurate data for personal navigation, mapping, and other location-based service applications in the car, online, and on mobile devices.
Inrix Traffic Services leverage robust Bayesian statistical analysis to aggregate and enhance traffic-related information from hundreds of public and private sources, going well beyond the limitations of static road sensor networks, historical-based models, and cellular data aggregators, to offer customers the most sophisticated understanding of the unique system-wide traffic patterns in each metropolitan area. To experience the traffic technology revolution behind the next-generation of navigation and location-based service applications, visit the company's Web site.