On the afternoon of June 17 at 4:30 PM, accompanied by flashing red and blue warning lights and audio alerts, the tidal lane at the intersection of Wangjiang West Road and Fenglin Road in Hefei High-tech Zone has ushered in a significant moment of the day. Just before the evening rush hour, this lane—normally designated for east-to-west traffic flow—instantly transformed into a west-to-east tidal lane, facilitating the flow of commuters returning to the city center from the High-tech Zone. Hefei traffic police introduced this as the first variable tidal lane in Anhui Province controlled automatically by robots, which had just “started duty” a few days ago.

At the scene, the reporter observed that the variable tidal lane was created by automatic lane separation using lane-changing robots controlling movable barriers. On June 17, Guan Wenzhou, Deputy Captain of the Hefei Public Security Bureau Traffic Police Brigade High-tech Unit, explained that this variable tidal lane is 90 meters long and is equipped with 20 lane-changing robots. During the morning and evening rush hours, the robots automatically move the isolation barriers according to the schedule set by the traffic police control center, converting the original east-to-west ordinary lane on Wangjiang West Road into a dynamic west-to-east tidal lane to alleviate congestion during peak hours for traffic heading from Hefei High-tech Zone to the city center.

“In the past, when we opened tidal lanes, it was basically done manually by placing cones and isolation belts combined with overhead signal lights. Now, with robot-controlled variable lanes, the workload for traffic police on the road is greatly reduced, and the efficiency of setting up tidal lanes is improved. For drivers, it used to take 4 to 5 traffic lights to pass through this intersection during rush hour; now it takes at most 2 traffic lights, greatly improving the intersection’s traffic efficiency,” Guan Wenzhou said. This lane-changing robot-controlled tidal lane officially “went on duty” on June 11. In just a few days, it has demonstrated the high efficiency and convenience brought by technology-enhanced traffic management at the intersection.

“This is our company’s first lane-changing robot-assisted urban traffic management project implemented in Anhui Province,” said Jin Peng, engineer at Guangdong Jinhongxing Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., on the afternoon of June 17 at the site. The lane-changing robots developed by the company integrate technologies such as intelligent chip sensing and horizontal dynamic balance movement. In the future, functionalities like tidal lane traffic flow monitoring and analysis or provincial-level controllable intelligent chips can be added based on Hefei’s urban traffic management needs, helping Hefei’s city traffic management become smarter.

Source: Anhui Business Daily