Skip to main content

Barcelona pilot for Hayden AI detection system

Hayden AI is last year's winner of Spanish city's Innova Lab Mobility challenge
By David Arminas March 21, 2025 Read time: 2 mins
Detection cameras will be on four buses in Spanish city (© Colicaranica | Dreamstime.com)

A pilot in Barcelona is using Hayden AI camera and data collection systems to automatically control bus lane infringements in order to improve bus circulation.

Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) has installed the system, which uses artificial intelligence, on four vehicles of the H12 and D20 bus routes where there are reserved bus lanes.

Hayden AI said that Barcelona’s pilot is the largest deployment of bus-mounted automated enforcement systems in Europe to date. Hayden AI also provides its bus-mounted camera technology to US public transport authorities in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington DC and Oakland in California, among others. 

Hayden AI noted that in New York, where automated bus lane enforcement with bus-mounted cameras has been used since 2019, bus speeds have increased by 5% and collisions have decreased by 20% on average.

The company is the winner of last year's Barcelona Innova Lab Mobility challenge launched by the Barcelona City Council, through the collaboration between the city’s Mobility Area information agency, BIT Habitat Foundation (which develops programmes and services to promote and facilitate urban innovation), TMB and trade fair organiser Fira de Barcelona.

The Hayden AI pilot uses a system of cameras installed inside the front of the four buses to detect vehicles that commit static violations - stopping or parking in the bus lanes and stops, obstructing the normal circulation of buses. The Hayden AI system provides statistical information on what it captures while the bus is operating on its route.

It takes photographs and records video sequences automatically, collecting all the data and contextual information of the violation. The system - using computer vision, cameras and sensors with 5G connectivity - does not record licence plates or people, nor are penalties issued to drivers or owners of the vehicles. The pilot test of the technological system will last six months.

Hayden AI's perception platform loads only the necessary data to detect acts of indiscipline in bus lanes, allowing it to identify points on the network that have the greatest decrease in bus speeds. The solution complies with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

“Hayden AI has had the privilege of helping cities in the US improve safety and public transport reliability – as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help increase transit ridership,” said Charles Territo, chief growth officer at Hayden AI.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Leeds abandons plans for CAZ
    October 19, 2020
    UK city says that the initiative has already done its job in reducing pollution
  • Transportation applications move to machine vision’s mainstream
    June 11, 2015
    The adaptation of machine vision to transport applications continues apace. That the machine vision industry is taking traffic installations seriously is evident by the amount of hardware and software products tailor-made for ITS applications that are now available on the market. A good example comes from US-based Gridsmart Technologies which has developed a single wire fisheye camera that provides a horizon to horizon view for use at intersections. Not only does the single camera replace four or more in a
  • Columbia goes intermodal to support sustainability
    April 10, 2014
    David Crawford on the ups and downs of a Latin metropolis. Medellín, Colombia’s second city and a recognised leader in sustainable transport thinking, is rapidly extending its substantial existing investment in modern mobility. It is deploying both an enhanced integrated traffic management array and the country’s first intermodal public transportation management system. The supplier of both, under separate €9 million (US$12.3 million) contracts, is Spanish engineering company Indra, a major exporter
  • Drones make Soarizon watcher of the skies
    December 16, 2020
    Getting a close view of where traffic problems are occurring is one of the main selling points of the ITS vision industry. Soarizon is doing things differently, Benjamin Orcan tells Adam Hill