Amap to offer traffic light countdown feature abroad

Chinese navigation app maker Amap said on Wednesday that it would roll out its AI-powered traffic light countdown feature to overseas markets, marking one of the first large-scale attempts to export the technology globally.

The feature, first launched by Amap in May 2022, uses artificial intelligence to simulate and predict traffic signal changes in real time, allowing users to see countdown timers for red lights while driving, cycling or walking through supported intersections.

Amap, owned by Alibaba Group, said the service has already been deployed across China, covering nearly 500,000 traffic-light intersections.

The company said the system can also estimate how many light cycles drivers may need to wait through at heavily congested intersections, aiming to improve both traffic efficiency and road safety.

Traffic-light countdown services have long been considered technically difficult in the global navigation industry because traffic signal standards vary widely across countries and many municipal systems do not provide open access to signal data.

Unlike conventional systems that rely on direct integration with traffic-light hardware, Amap said its technology predicts signal changes through AI models trained on historical traffic patterns, real-time vehicle flow and intersection signal behavior.

The company added that its latest generation system is powered by a visual spatiotemporal model, or VSTM, which incorporates visual sequence perception into spatial computing to better interpret complex and dynamic traffic conditions at intersections.

Amap said it began applying for patents related to traffic-light countdown technology as early as 2019 and has since built a portfolio covering traffic-cycle mining, signal phase calculation and navigation interface optimization.