Work

Seeing the City Live: Bridging Edge Vehicle Perception and Cloud Digital Twins to Empower Smart Cities

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: This paper presents a framework that integrates real-time onboard (ego vehicle) perception module with edge processing capabilities and a cloud-based digital twin for intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) in smart city applications. The proposed system combines onboard 3D object detection and tracking with low latency edge-to-cloud communication, achieving an average end-to-end latency below 0.02 s at 10 Hz update frequency. Experiments conducted on a real autonomous vehicle platform demonstrate a mean Average Precision (mAP@40) of 83.5% for the 3D perception module. The proposed system enables real-time traffic visualization while enabling scalable data management by reducing communication overhead. Future work will extend the system to multi-vehicle deployments and incorporate additional environmental semantics such as traffic signal states, road conditions, and predictive Artificial Intelligence (AI) models to enhance decision support in dynamic urban environments.

Source: Smart Cities

DOI: 10.3390/smartcities8060197

Authors: Hafsa Iqbal, Jaime Godoy, Beatriz Martin, Abdulla Al-kaff, Fernando Garcia

Institution: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Language: English

Topic: Autonomous Vehicle Technology and Safety

Subfield: Automotive Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Industry, innovation and infrastructure, Sustainable cities and communities

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,413