In 2012, Keith (our founder) was asked to define the global future of transport technology in the World Roads Handbook. In that moment, he knew that instead of just writing about the future, he had the opportunity to build it.
Two years later a chance meeting at a conference sparked the first step towards
Simpifai.
Keith sat next to Professor Lee McCluskey, and the two got talking.
They both shared a frustration about the current state of transport technology and Lee described the work he’d been doing using a niche form of artificial
intelligence to solve traffic problems.
The same technology, in fact, that’s used to move unmanned vehicles
across the surface of Mars!
And so, it
began. Not as Simplfai, but as a
collection of individuals who thought they could solve the apparently
‘unsolvable’ problem of traffic congestion.
In 2014 we
made the first tentative steps. Working with the University of Huddersfield,
where Lee is the chair of software engineering, we produced the conceptual
design for Simplifai. The impossible had now become possible.
In 2016 we won a competition with Innovate UK, the UK government’s innovation agency to take our design and prove it on a very small scale. It was just a simulation, but we proved it was possible.
(Below is a picture of Keith [left hand side] our CEO and Lee our CRO)
In 2017 we then won a contract with Innovate UK to build a prototype - a First of a Kind project as part of the UK government industrial strategy, working with Transport for Greater Manchester. JD joined the team and Simplifai was formed.
We’ve now built the early-stage version of the product.
The project was a success. We’ve challenged convention and done the ‘impossible’. We can successfully and flexibly control traffic systems using AI.
So now, we look to the future. To a world without traffic congestion or other traffic-related problems.
Simplifai is the smart solution to those problems.
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