How CitRad was conceived
Where do you start to make a meaningful contribution to the traffic turnaround? We pondered this for a few days at FabLab Cottbus. We quickly realized that we wanted to implement a joint project. With the participation of interested citizens from Cottbus and the surrounding area, a citizen science project was to be created that would collect traffic data and make it available to everyone for evaluation and, above all, as a basis for discussion on traffic-related decisions in the city of Cottbus.
It was not yet clear to us at the time how we wanted to collect this data. Our first thoughts were along the lines of AI-evaluated video images. Although this would not have been a technical problem, it would have raised unanswered questions and caused problems in terms of data protection.
Radar instead of video
It was a good thing that the FabLab brings together people with a wide range of knowledge. One of them had the necessary prior knowledge and the brilliant idea of using radar signals instead of video images. In one fell swoop, all data protection concerns were dispelled and the research for the best components for an initial prototype began.
Finding a name made easy
Every good project also needs a good name. Since we wanted to stick to the idea of citizen science and the radar system was now the focus, we quickly agreed on an acronym of Citizen Science Traffic Radar.