What is SafeStep@AU?

SafeStep is a smart-intersection system designed to help keep pedestrians safe. AI-enabled cameras monitor crosswalks and instantly detect pedestrians and vehicles. Instead of streaming large video files over the wireless network, SafeStep transmits only the most important information: what is present, where it is located, and whether it is safe to cross. This approach is called Semantic Communication: transmitting the meaning of a scene rather than its raw pixels.

Powered by Meta-VIB, an innovative data-importance-driven semantic communication technique, SafeStep uses a compact AI model with only 4.16M parameters to extract, prioritize, and transmit the most safety-critical information from live traffic camera feeds while adapting to dynamic channel conditions. The transmitter view on the left shows what the cameras capture, while the receiver view on the right shows the scene reconstructed after transmission through a noisy channel. By sending the most critical details first, SafeStep preserves essential information even when the signal is weak.

Try it: compare different semantic communication techniques to see which methods best preserve safety-critical details and adapt to varying channel conditions, including SNR, codelength, and Age of Information.