Hungarian motorways enter the digital age with AI-powered monitoring system

Hungarian motorways have officially stepped into the digital age. A new AI-powered traffic monitoring system has been launched on the shared M1-M7 section near Budaörs. The project’s aim isn’t just to monitor traffic but to lay the foundation for a future where roads become active participants in transportation networks.

One of the key elements of the development is the installation of 39 different types of sensors—radars, LiDARs, thermal cameras, and optical cameras—along an 800-meter stretch of motorway. These devices gather real-time traffic data and transmit up to 1.5 gigabytes per second via optical connections to the Hungarian Public Road’s data centre in Budapest, where a high-performance supercomputer analyses and models the information.

According to Vezess.hu, experts from the Department of Vehicle Technology at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics were responsible for calibrating the sensors and training the AI models. The initiative is part of a Hungarian-Austrian collaboration within the so-called Eureka Central System, which aims to transform road networks into data-driven intelligent systems—not just in Budapest, but eventually across the entire country.

Supercomputer on the motorway: Not sci-fi, but reality

The heart of the system is its “digital twin”—a real-time digital replica that mirrors every vehicle and roadside object on this section of the motorway. It’s more than just a visualisation tool; the digital model makes it possible to simulate self-driving vehicles and driver-assist systems in an extremely precise environment.

The core idea is not just for vehicles to “see,” but also to communicate with the infrastructure. If a car brakes or changes lanes, other vehicles—and even the traffic management system itself—can instantly detect it. This marks a revolutionary shift in traffic regulation: no longer limited to signs and signals, but driven by data.