Automotive tier ones discover the Smart City
The idea of leveraging the connected car to implement Smart City applications is triggered mainly on the finding that in technologies and products established in the car can easily be transplanted or enhanced to the functional units that make up the Smart City as a whole. This is where Continental sets in: The transfer of proven vehicle electronics technology into the urban infrastructure is a contribution to the “Smartification” of the cities – for instance making intersections safe, making it easier to find a parking space and making traffic more fluid overall – which en passant helps reducing the emissions from the vehicles.
“Urban transport is probably one of the greatest challenges of future mobility”, said Continental CEO Elmar Degenhart. “To achieve safe, flowing city traffic with clean air and convenient parking, cities need to rethink their traffic flow and transport systems. Now is the right time to support them in finding a new and more efficient balance between individual transport and collectively usable vehicles. Sustainable mobility requires the development of solutions that go far beyond individual vehicles.”
Continental’s CES highlights include the latest version of the self-driving concept car BEE (Balanced Economy and Ecology). The vehicle supports the Intelligent Intersection technology to be installed in the Smart City of Columbus (Ohio, USA). The BEE can be summoned via Smartphone app and is intended to be part of a municipal or metropolitan public transportation fleet that in the future can enable flexible and safe mobility of all. By means of approaches like object recognition, DSRC radio communications and sensor fusion, the system can establish a near-realtime V2X safety communication system.
Likewise, Continental competitor Bosch sketched the vision of a Smart City based on established technologies which in turn have their roots in automotive electronics. With its technology, the Stuttgart, Germany based automotive supplier intends to tap the fast growing and huge market for Smart Cities: According to a study commissioned by the technology company, this market will have a volume of $800 billion in 2020 and grow at a pace of 19 percent annually.
The company is currently involved in 14 comprehensive Smart City projects worldwide. For example, Bosch equipped 5000 street lamps in San Leandro (San Francisco Bay Area) with intelligent LED and sensor technology that dims the light down when it is not needed, helping the municipal administration to save $8 million throughout the next 15 years.
According to Bosch board member Stefan Hartung, Artificial Intelligence will be one of the pillars to build the Smart City. In 2017, the company has launched R&D activities in the field of AI that take place at Bosch’s Renningen campus in Germany, Palo Alto in California and Bengaluru (India). Over the next five years, Bosch will invest some 300 million euros into AI research; in ten years from now, almost no product will be conceivable without AI, Hartung said.
At CES, Bosch demonstrated a Smart City solution it co-developed with Intel: The microclimate monitoring system Climo. It measures and analyses twelve parameters relevant for air quality, from the air’s oxygen and carbon oxide content to temperature and relative humidity. The system is hundred times more compact that comparable existing systems.
Also for designed for environmental monitoring purposes is the Flood Monitoring System introduced at the CES. Based on ultrasound measurements, the system is constantly checking the parameters like water level, flow sped and flow capacity of rivers and similar waters within an urban environment and sends its data to a cloud-based system that identifies imminent flooding situations at an early stage and issues appropriate warnings to citizens and organizations.
Like Continental, Bosch has discovered the search for a parking spot as an urgent problem for metropolitan drivers: The average American car driver spends more than 40 hours per year in traffic jams or in search of a parking space, wasting more than $160 billion (in Germany and other European countries, the situation is not better). With its Community-based Parking solution, Bosch promises to relief drivers from searching: As the car passes by, it detects and measures gaps between parked vehicles with its on-board radar and ultrasound sensors. The vehicle then feeds its findings in real time to a digital map. This allows drivers to navigate directly to free parking spaces. Bosch is already testing the service in German cities, including Stuttgart. This year, it will be followed by up to 20 American metropoles such as Los Angeles, Miami and Boston.
Also in the area of smart power generation and distribution, Bosch sees new opportunities: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), cities today account for around 75 percent of global energy consumption. Buildings alone account for 40 percent of this figure. Energy consumption worldwide is expected to will increase by 30 percent by 2035. To reduce electricity consumption through intelligent energy management, Bosch has developed DC Microgrid, a solution to supply power to larger buildings or building complexes. Microgrids are particularly environment-friendly, since they generally draw their energy from renewable sources. Compared to conventional power plants, DC Microgrids can save up to ten percent energy. In addition, they are also reliable power suppliers due to their self-sufficiency if the standard supply fails for weather or safety reasons.
Related articles:
New ‘ad-hoc’ microgrid design approach guarantees stability
Bill Gates invests $80M to create smart city in Arizona
Bosch and Continental buy into virtual map company HERE
Sidewalk Labs to build ‘smart neighborhood’ in Toronto
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :