The Artificial Intelligence for Integrated Mobility at the Indian Institute of Science (AIM@IISc) launched the Urban Vision Hackathon (UVH-26) datasets and models on Friday, targeting enhancements in Indian urban traffic systems.

The comprehensive traffic image collection includes 26,646 high-resolution photos sourced from Bengaluru’s Safe City project. Vehicle-specific annotations were meticulously prepared during the hackathon with contributions from more than 560 student volunteers in a collaborative crowdsourcing initiative. This data highlights the critical role of locally relevant datasets in optimising transportation networks.

“India has always been data-poor for AI applications, especially in mobility, given the scale and complexity of Indian traffic. UVH-26 is a testament to how crowdsourced efforts by hundreds of engaged students can create high-quality datasets that rival global benchmarks. This shows the power of community-driven AI for solving local challenges,” said Yogesh Simmhan, Associate Professor at Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS), IISc.

The UVH-26 project was executed by the Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning (CiSTUP), CDS, Bengaluru City Police, and Bengaluru Traffic Police.

“We often talk about evidence-based decision support for our cities, but it really starts with good data – something we still struggle with because collecting it is expensive and time-consuming. Accurate traffic detection models can change that by using existing city cameras to generate reliable data for planning, signal control, congestion management, and safety analytics. UVH-26 can help all Indian cities, not just Bengaluru, build such datasets and enable data-driven solutions,” said Vijay Kovvali, Research Professor at CiSTUP, IISc.