NEC to show physical AI traffic control for expressways at ITS World Congress

What NEC is bringing to Gangneung

NEC Corporation (TSE: 6701) has announced it will take part in the 32nd ITS World Congress as an exhibitor at the ITS Japan Pavilion, which showcases public- and private-sector exhibitors affiliated with ITS Japan. The booth number is S25. The five-day conference and exhibition runs from Monday, October 19, to Friday, October 23, 2026.

The ITS World Congress focuses on intelligent transport systems (ITS). According to the announcement, it aims to solve road traffic problems through wider adoption of ITS and to create business opportunities. It is the only world congress co-organized annually by three ITS organizations: ERTICO for Europe, ITS America for the Americas and ITS Asia-Pacific for the Asia-Pacific region. The program includes technical sessions, exhibits and panel discussions covering technological development and market trends.

Three core technologies for expressways

NEC's exhibit follows the concept "Shaping the Mobility of Tomorrow." The company says it aims to use ICT, road infrastructure and related data to create environmentally friendly mobility services that ensure safety, security and convenience. Data collected through these services will be integrated to support smarter, more sustainable and efficient transportation.

Using domestic and global case studies, videos and panels, NEC will introduce a solution that combines three core technologies:

• Digital twin data fusion: On a digital twin platform with real-time spatiotemporal synchronization, data fusion technology enables detailed real-time monitoring of road environments from multimodal sensor data.
• Wrong-way driving detection with distributed fiber-optic sensing: Continuous sensing along an entire route is meant to eliminate monitoring blind spots. This allows early detection of unforeseen circumstances such as vehicles traveling in the wrong direction or obstacles on the road. Following vehicles can be alerted to take evasive action, which NEC says improves traffic flow and safety.
• Long-range LiDAR for driving safety support: The technology captures 3D expressway information in real time, detects and tracks moving vehicles, and quickly provides traffic condition updates to autonomous and other vehicles.

NEC says these technologies will advance social infrastructure, including distributed edge AI processing platforms, by enabling spatiotemporal synchronization of sensor data collected across wide areas using fiber-optic sensing.

Field trial results and NEC's direction

The results of field trials conducted on expressways will be presented in a poster presentation and at the booth exhibit featuring the accepted technical paper. The announcement does not give figures from those trials.

Looking ahead, NEC says it will use its ICT infrastructure technology and proprietary analytical AI to deliver digital infrastructure for the AI Transformation (AX) era. NEC defines AX as initiatives that go beyond simply implementing AI as a tool, reshaping business processes, business models and organizational culture based on AI. The company says this infrastructure will allow physical AI to be deployed across regional road networks through digital twins that are synchronized in real time.

What it means for road operators

The exhibit points to how NEC wants to position its sensing and analytics products for road operators: combining fiber-optic and LiDAR data in one digital twin to cover long stretches of expressway. Visitors to the congress can see the approach through case studies and the field trial results NEC plans to present. The source does not state commercial availability or pricing.