Led by Chinese group Sunsea Telecommunications, the funding will be used to further expand Ayla’s product capabilities within large enterprises. This includes extracting IoT data and turning it into business intelligence to expand its ecosystem network of partners and application providers.

As part of the new venture, Ayla and Sunsea IoT, a subsidiary of Sunsea Telecommunications, are forming a new company named Ayla Sunsea, which will sell and deliver Ayla’s offerings to customers with headquarters in China.

“Ayla has won some of China’s largest manufacturers, especially in the home appliance and air conditioning segments,” said Phillip Chang, Ayla co-founder and now general manager of Ayla China.

“The partnership with Sunsea will make available far more resources to support our customers, and Sunsea’s China market knowledge and relationships will allow us to expand much faster in the large telco and enterprise opportunities inside China.”

Satellite IoT tech coming to rural Australia

A start-up called Myriota is claiming that it can help bridge the connectivity gap between urban and rural Australia with a ‘direct to orbit’ solution next year.

According to ZDNet, the company’s CEO, Alex Grant, said that his firm is already trialling the technology with the agricultural sector through livestock and water monitoring. In addition, the company has started to work in other areas such as marine science, defence and the tracking of utilities.

Myriota’s chips claim to have a battery life of four years and it hopes to have geolocation technology installed in the future that won’t be reliant on satellites above, as well being more secure.

Going so far as to call its own product the “holy grail” of remote IoT services, Myriota aims to take advantage of the growing number of nanosatellites being launched into orbit for telecommunications purposes.

Waymo closer to having autonomous cars on the road

Google’s autonomous car division, Waymo, appears to be getting closer and closer to an official launch after car retailer AutoNation announced that the two have come to an agreement.

Under the multi-year deal, AutoNation will maintain and repair Waymo’s fleet of vehicles when they actually start to become commercially available.

According to Engadget, AutoNation CEO Michael J Jackson said it will be a big task for his company.

“These vehicles need to be in service for hundreds of thousands of miles, much more than personal-use vehicles, to make them economically viable,” he said.

“You have to do much more proactive, preventative maintenance than what a normal person would do with a car.”

 5G infrastructure market to be worth $33.72bn by 2026

The infrastructure that will drive the mass adoption of 5G connectivity is expected to be a lucrative area, with a new report from MarketsandMarkets estimating that by 2020, it could be worth $2.86bn.

Then, just six years later, this would multiply to $33.72bn, driven by increasing demand for mobile data services, rising importance of software implementation in communication network, growth of machine-to-machine communication in industries, and growing demand for high speed and large network coverage.

The area believed to hold the largest share of the 5G infrastructure market is consumer electronics, as more smartphones become available with compatibility for the standard.

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As per the nuclear deal signed under former US president Barack Obama, Iran agreed to not pursue the development of nuclear weapons on the condition that it would be able to develop nuclear energy.

However, despite that deal being nearly two years old, little progress has been made. Now, Iran has been told that it can’t pursue one of the major linchpins of that agreement: the chance to collaborate on the massive nuclear fusion project in France, known as ITER.

The US government is believed to be behind the block as, for months now, Iran had been expecting to put pen to paper on the research collaboration.

Ali Akbar Salehi, president of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, put it quite bluntly: “It was all moving well, until [Donald] Trump took office.”

Hopes not completely dashed

Under anonymity, an ITER official has confirmed the US’s part in the deal’s collapse for Iran as, in order for a country to be included in the project, all participating nations must unanimously agree to each other’s membership.

Officials in both Iran and Europe have also said they now believe other elements of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the official name for the Iran nuclear deal – to be compromised.

The decision should come as little surprise, however, given that Trump has openly criticised the JCPOA, saying it is not in his country’s interest and that, in the period where the US government re-evaluates its participation, it could seriously compromise the deal’s future.

Iran’s nuclear fusion work might still continue though, as it has plans with other European nations such as Italy, where dozens of Iranian scientists will train at a new facility in the city of Trieste.

Also, Iran has held early talks on participation in the Joint European Torus fusion project in the UK, although that too could be under threat from international influence due to the result of Brexit.

The Azadi Tower in Tehran, Iran. Image: Kanisorn Pringthongfoo/Shutterstock

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In a paper published to the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a team of researchers revealed its new SOFT material, an acronym of Self-Organised Framework on Textiles.

Aimed at any profession where a ‘hazmat’ suit is needed – such as in the military or emergency services – SOFT is supposedly the first demonstration of simultaneous detection, capture, pre-concentration and filtration of gases in a wearable that uses conductive, porous materials integrated into soft textiles.

“By adding this fabric to a protective suit, sensors can alert the user if a chemical is penetrating the hazardous-material gear,” said Katherine Mirica, who was involved in the research.

“This is not just passive protection; the textile can actively alarm a user if there is a tear or defect in the fabric, or if functional performance is diminished in any other way.”

Experiments conducted with the material showed it was capable of detecting common toxic chemicals such as nitric oxide (found in exhaust fumes) and hydrogen sulphide, a corrosive poison. The SOFT material was able to capture and filter these toxins.

The SOFT e-textile uses metal-organic frameworks to improve detection and protection from toxic chemicals. Image: K A Mirica

The future of designer materials

This system is among the first to demonstrate flexible, textile-supported electronic sensors based on materials known as metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs.

“MOFs are the future of designer materials, just like plastics were in the post-WWII era,” said Mirica.

“By integrating the MOFs into our SOFT devices, we dramatically enhance the performance of smart fabrics that are essential to safety and security.”

Mirica and the rest of her team believe that the SOFT devices featuring MOFs display reliable conductivity, enhanced porosity, flexibility and stability to washing. The fabrics are also stable in heat, have a good shelf life and retain full utility under humid conditions.

While it still requires a lot more development before it can used on any wearable systems, the team is hoping that SOFT material created using MOFs has the potential to be extended into other systems, producing a range of novel, multifunctional e-textiles.

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In a paper published to the journal Nature Communications, the team detailed how it was able to control the shape of polymer molecules so that they self-assemble into non-spherical nanoparticles.

With an eye on using it to improve the delivery of toxic drugs to tumours, the team was able to make smart polymers that shift their shape according to the different conditions around them, to form tiny ellipsoidal or tubular structures that can encapsulate drugs.

In doing so, these natural-shaped plastic nanoparticles enter tumour cells more easily than spherical ones.

‘Straightforward but elegant solution’

Most biological structures – such as cells, bacteria and viruses – come in a variety of shapes, including tubes, rods, squashed spheres and ellipsoids.

However, it has proven very difficult for scientists to synthesise particles that are not perfectly round. As such, this breakthrough offers significant potential.

To achieve this result, the UNSW Sydney team worked with polymer molecules that contain both a water-soluble portion and a non-water-soluble portion.

In the solution, these molecules then self-assemble into round, hollow structures known as polymersomes, which are rapidly emerging as powerful new tools to deliver drugs to the desired part of the body, due to their high stability, chemical versatility and the ease with which molecules on their surface can be altered.

“It’s a straightforward but elegant solution which we feel has great potential for making a wide range of complex polymer structures inspired by nature,” said Prof Martina Stenzel of the research team.

Efforts to introduce new materials for drug delivery and treatment are an ever-growing pursuit of science, similar to what is being undertaken by a French start-up called Eligo Bioscience, which wants to use nanobots in the human body for precision medicine.

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Working with Dublin City Council, Vodafone will be running the network as part of the Smart Dublin initiative.

Both organisations are also creating a €50,000 innovation fund aimed at start-ups and researchers to test smart city technologies on the NB-IoT platform, which will be administered by Smart Dublin and DCU Alpha.

Among the earliest deployments of NB-IoT will be smart rubbish bins that will alert local authorities once they are full to improve the city’s cleanliness.

Reaper botnet threatens hundreds of millions of IoT devices

The Mirai botnet is still firmly lodged in the memory of cybersecurity researchers, but fear is already growing over another new botnet, Reaper.

According to cybersecurity firm BullGuard, Reaper has already found itself on more than 1m devices worldwide but now threatens as many as 378m.

Reaper uses actual software hacking techniques to break into devices, evolving it beyond the October 2016 Mirai IoT botnet, which exploited weak or default passwords on impacted IP cameras and internet routers.

BullGuard’s CEO Paul Lipman has warned that unpreparedness is leaving many IoT devices and their owners vulnerable to devastating distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

“The industry must wake up and address this issue,” he said. “Taking down websites may seem relatively innocuous, but Reaper has the potential to cause massive amounts of damage, including crashing important online services.

“These are very real and plausible scenarios, yet those responsible for security seem to have gone to sleep.”

Smart cities need smart solutions, or face dire consequences

Also echoing security concerns this week was Paul Ward, international sales director of ETELM, a manufacturer of advanced mission-critical communications systems.

However, in his example, it is our increasingly smarter cities and the critical systems being built and tested through technologies such as NB-IoT and 5G that are at risk.

“We are living through extraordinary times where rapid technological advancements are being accomplished around the globe,” Ward said at the recent Broadband World Forum in Berlin.

“However, critical communications solution providers need to ensure that legacy and pre-existing infrastructure can keep pace with the new demands being placed on them, while also future-proofing new solutions and infrastructures to guarantee the challenges of today are not replicated in the future.”

He added that with multiple different standards of technology out there, a greater amount of open-source technology will be needed to reduce the users’ reliance on single vendors and increase functionality and competition.

IoT development dominates thinking of Japanese government

The current Japanese government, under prime minister Shinzo Abe, has given priority developmental focus on the technologies of IoT and artificial intelligence as it tries not to get left behind by continental and global rivals.

According to the Financial Times, Japan has developed what it calls the “vending machine problem” whereby it has millions of vending machines offering a whole range of services, but as few as 100 are actually connected online.

The industry trade association responsible for them is now saying that companies working in this space are missing out on vast quantities of data that could prove useful both for themselves and marketers.

One proposed plan will see Tokyo contributing financially to start-ups and researchers to develop semiconductor technology to drive IoT’s development in Japan.

China’s 5G roll-out is well underway

China seems to be on course to lead the world in 5G connectivity, with news from the country’s media that its second phase of national testing is set to be concluded by the end of this year.

According to Wen Ku, director of the telecom department at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, it will then start its third round of testing next year with expectation that by June 2018, it will introduce the first global 5G standard.

By 2020, China’s 5G network will be commercialised, which would make it one of the largest markets for the next generation of connectivity.

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This isn’t the description of a terrifying robot from a dystopian future, but the latest generation of the RoboBee drone developed by researchers at the Harvard John A Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

In a paper published to Science Robotics, the researchers revealed that the new generation of RoboBee is 1,000 times lighter than any previous aerial-to-aquatic robot and could be used for numerous applications, from search-and-rescue operations to environmental monitoring and biological studies.

Beyond what nature can achieve

Thanks to advances in the science of flotation, this multipurpose air-water microrobot can stabilise on the water’s surface before an internal combustion system ignites to propel it back into the air.

“This is the first microrobot capable of repeatedly moving in and through complex environments,” said Yufeng Chen, first author of the paper.

“We designed new mechanisms that allow the vehicle to directly transition from water to air, something that is beyond what nature can achieve in the insect world.”

The latest version of RoboBee. Image: Yufeng Chen/Harvard SEAS

Designing such a robot at a small scale was no easy feat – because water is 1,000 times denser than air, the wing flapping speed varies widely between the two mediums.

This means that if the flapping frequency is too low, the RoboBee can’t fly; if it is too high, the wing will snap off in water.

To solve this challenge, the Harvard team was able to find a ‘Goldilocks’ combination of wing size and flapping rate by combining theoretical modelling and experimental data.

This resulted in the RoboBee being able to flaps its wings at 220 to 300Hz in air, and nine to 13Hz in water.

Another issue to solve was how the RoboBee would be able to exit water without its surface tension – 10 times the weight of the drone and three times its maximum lift – which would crush it like something hitting a brick wall.

The answer was in attaching the nanobot with four buoyant outriggers and a central gas collection chamber that contains an electrolytic plate. When the RoboBee swims to the surface, this plate converts water into oxyhydrogen, thereby blasting it to freedom.

Speaking of its future, Chen said: “We hope that our work investigating trade-offs like weight and surface tension can inspire future multifunctional microrobots – ones that can move on complex terrains and perform a variety of tasks.”

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We live in an age of urbanisation. For the past 10 years or so, more than half of the world’s population has lived in cities. Moreover, there’s no end in sight for this migration of people to urban areas. On the contrary, the latest UN forecast predicts that 70pc of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050. At that point, the world’s total urban population will be almost equal to the Earth’s entire population today. Within a mere century, the number of people living in big cities will have grown from 1bn to almost 6bn.

This trend will also lead to the rise of more and more megacities – cities that have more than 10m inhabitants. Whereas there were 28 megacities in 2014, there are expected to be 41 by 2030. Demands on infrastructures are expected to grow accordingly.

Smaller cities are also expected to grow considerably. In 2016, there were about 500 cities with more than 1m inhabitants; by 2030, there could well be more than 650.

Many cities are already suffering from housing shortages, overstretched infrastructures, and uncertain water and energy supplies. Added to this is the increasing risk of natural disasters resulting from climate change. Emissions from big cities, in particular from the transportation sector, are contributing considerably to this development. According to recent studies, the most effective low-carbon strategy would be to electrify this sector. Some areas are already trending in this direction. However, if the rise in global temperatures is to be kept to less than 2C, 90pc of all road vehicles would have to be electric by 2060.

Infographic: Siemens

Clean air and water for all

The possibility that urban environments may deteriorate as a result of weather changes is a major threat. The aim in many cities is, therefore, to set the stage for clean air instead of smog, incentivise electric mobility instead of congested roads, and promote clean drinking water and affordable electricity from renewable sources that are available when needed, instead of expensive or ‘dirty’ energy produced from fossil fuels.

As more and more cities move toward these goals, they will rely increasingly on digital resources that will, for example, monitor emissions figures and traffic density, and coordinate local public transportation and traffic-light switching times with monitoring results. Ultimately, they will also use digital technologies to inform individuals about the best ways to reach their destinations, regardless of whether they are driving their own vehicles, sharing cars, using a public transport system or combining transport modes.

‘The challenge that cities face is thus to turn this avalanche of data into actionable information’

The effects are surprising. A recent study from Siemens published on 4 July 2017 in cooperation with Arup and supported by London’s deputy mayor for business, looked at the capital of the UK as a business case for smart cities. The report states that on-street smart parking management for the ‘arc of opportunity’ area in the eastern part of the city could save drivers who are looking for parking spaces 33,000 hours in the car. Applying these savings to an economic valuation of time savings leads to total indirect benefits of €870,000.

Forecasts for smart cities

The first step toward making a city smart is to increase knowledge regarding the operations of its infrastructures, ranging from water and energy management to traffic, air quality and lighting. In every big city, innumerable sensors and meters collect data from these and other sources. The challenge that cities face is thus to turn this avalanche of data into actionable information.

Answers as to how this can be done are provided by smart software – for example, the City Performance Tool (CyPT) from Siemens. It gives guidance to a city on how to achieve its environmental targets while providing an indication on how each infrastructure-related decision will influence job creation and the infrastructure sector growth.

However, many other software programmes consist of more complex systems known as neural networks. Neural networks are computer models that operate in a way that is similar to the human brain. They can be trained to recognise inter-relationships and use this knowledge to make forecasts.

‘Precise forecasts that are based on recorded data are at the heart of almost all smart city solutions’

Infographic: Siemens

One example of the fascinating results that are possible with neural networks is software that was developed by Ralph Grothmann from Siemens Corporate Technology. The software can precisely predict the level of air pollution in major cities several days in advance.

Precise forecasts that are based on recorded data are at the heart of almost all smart city solutions. Such forecasts will enable smart grids to offset fluctuations in the electricity supply that are caused by changing weather conditions. A step in this direction is already taking shape as fleets of electric cars are integrated into building management systems so that the vehicles can serve as energy-storage devices.

From smart data to new markets

The future of smart cities will be shaped by the internet of things (IoT) as a networking technology and by smart data as a forecasting technology. For example, it will be possible to coordinate power generation and power demand more precisely than ever before. This development will make increasing decentralisation manageable, merge the markets for heating and electricity, and integrate industrial facilities, buildings and vehicles as energy suppliers.

One step in this direction is offered by MindSphere, an open, cloud-based IoT operating system from Siemens that offers both connectivity and a range of industrial applications so that any enterprise, regardless of industry or size, can begin analysing data to optimise its operations. Similarly, cities and infrastructure operators can develop IoT applications to relieve traffic congestion, conserve water and energy, and improve infrastructure services.

Singapore and Siemens aim to join forces in a drive to make the south-east Asian city-state a ‘smart nation’. Piloting MindSphere as the IoT operating system, Singapore has a unique opportunity to become a world-leading, fully integrated urban ecosystem. Siemens is supporting this master plan by setting up a digitalisation hub, which was inaugurated on 11 July 2017.

This will open up completely new markets for technologies and services. A McKinsey report from 2016 estimates that a total of $49trn will have to be invested in infrastructure projects worldwide between 2016 and 2030 in order to simply buttress expected economic growth rates. This averages out to $3.3trn per year, or about 3.8pc of worldwide GDP (based on an average GDP increase of 3.3pc per year). Approximately 60pc of these investments would have to be made in emerging markets.

This trend is causing the global market for smart city solutions to grow. According to Navigant Research, this market will grow by 10pc annually, from $40bn in 2017 to $98bn in 2026.

Infographic: Siemens

Cities and their residents can be linked together in networks that have the potential for optimising not only energy use, but transportation, logistics, medical information, entertainment and much more. Ultimately, however, all of these services are based on data, and that raises concerns about a ‘Big Brother’ state.

Will tomorrow’s cities be the world of George Orwell’s 1984? Not at all, says Gerhard Engelbrecht, expert in intelligent information and communications technology (ICT) at Siemens Corporate Technology. He heads the smart ICT topic in the Aspern urban lakeside development project in Vienna, where more than 100 households are taking part in the research and making their data on power consumption, air quality and room temperature available. “We are aware of this sensible topic and have designed the system accordingly, that only anonymised and aggregated information can be used for research,” he assured.

Open-air computers

What will it take to make cities smarter and increasingly liveable?

On the one hand, says Carlo Ratti, an architect, engineer and professor at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, cities won’t look much different in the future than they do today, in the same way that Roman cities didn’t differ that much from modern ones.

“What will change, however, is the way we experience cities,” said Ratti. He believes that this change will be due to the comprehensive use of digital technologies.

These technologies have already been introduced into all areas of cities over the past 10 years, and they now form the backbone of a large intelligent infrastructure. According to Ratti, our cities are increasingly turning into “open-air computers”.

By Sandra Zistl

Sandra Zistl works as a freelance editor and author for print and online media, and is based in Munich, Germany.

A version of this article was originally published in Pictures of the Future from Siemens

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Both organisations are also creating a €50,000 innovation fund aimed at start-ups and researchers to test smart city technologies on the NB-IoT platform, which will be administered by Smart Dublin and DCU Alpha.

‘The Smart Docklands District, with its density of new builds, global tech companies, smart assets and range of connectivity options, provides a unique platform for SMEs and entrepreneurs to develop new and innovative solutions that will transform the way our cities operate’
^{– JAMIE CUDDEN}

CEO of Vodafone Ireland, Anne O’Leary, told Siliconrepublic.com that the aim is to encourage innovation in the emerging IoT field by enabling collaboration between companies, research centres and other bodies.

Among the earliest deployments of NB-IoT will be smart rubbish bins that will alert local authorities once bins are full to improve the city’s cleanliness.

There is also a new product innovation that focuses on flood monitoring and response. Voguetek, an Irish SME based in Meath, is working in partnership with Vodafone and DCC to develop low-cost, connected sensors that will use the new NB-IoT network to report potential gully blockages before they become a flood hazard or risk.

Debbie Power, IoT sales manager at Vodafone, explained that the collaboration with Voguetek around flood defences was enabled by the latter’s expertise in ultrasonics.

Jamie Cudden, smart city programme manager at DCC, said: “The Smart Docklands District, with its density of new builds, global tech companies, smart assets and range of connectivity options, provides a unique platform for SMEs and entrepreneurs to develop new and innovative solutions that will transform the way our cities operate.

“The technology has the potential to be used right across the country in both an urban and rural capacity.”

NB-IoT can connect millions of smart devices

From left: Jamie Cudden, smart city programme manager, Dublin City Council; Anne O’Leary, CEO of Vodafone Ireland; and Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment Denis Naughten, TD. Image: Naoise Culhane

The NB-IoT testbed roll-out in Dublin by Vodafone and DCC follows the €2m Infinite IoT industrial platform in Cork, created two years ago as part of a joint investment by Vodafone and EMC.

In August, Vodafone became the first mobile operator to commercially launch its NB-IoT network.

NB-IoT is a low-power, wide-area network technology. It is designed to wirelessly connect millions of devices that have low bandwidth requirements.

“Anywhere we have existing 4G network, we have NB-IoT, too,” O’Leary explained.

“Predominantly, the vast use of NB-IoT in its early days will be by utility companies, to protect and manage assets like gas, water, electricity. We are also helping with use cases in the agricultural sector as well as in the logistics business.

“The companies that we have signed up for use cases range from start-ups to multinationals – it is very diverse.”

O’Leary added that the new €50,000 fund is attracting considerable interest from start-ups, established firms and research centres. “It’s growing legs every day as more and more people want to be involved. There are so many use cases for NB-IoT in the smart city, ranging from smart bins to sensors that will tell the council if lifebuoys have been interfered with or moved.

“We can see this whole field evolve as Dublin’s smart city evolves and our nationwide NB-IoT is used nationally.”

The docklands initiative was welcomed by Communications Minister Denis Naughten, TD.

“Smart technology has the potential to radically change the way we live and work in Ireland, and is vital if we are to achieve our ambitions of being able to compete on a truly global stage.

“I want to commend both Vodafone and Dublin City Council on enabling an innovation programme of this scale, which not only has the potential to transform the day-to-day lives of every citizen, business and community in Dublin, but the benefits this can have across Ireland are limitless.

“Today’s announcement is a significant step forward in Ireland’s journey to becoming a world leader in the development and deployment of internet of things innovations,” Naughten said.

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It isn’t just the combination of silicon, 5G, data and sensors that has Patti Robb, the chief strategist in charge of Intel’s Silicon Valley Autonomous Vehicle Lab, fired up about the future of transport.

For her, it is personal.

“My brother passed away after sustaining injuries in an auto accident,” she said, explaining that her motivation is as much about safety and saving lives as it is about the march of technology.

‘Really, there has never been a more transformational time to be working in the autotech industry, and it will really transform economic opportunities for passengers, too’
^{– PATTI ROBB}

It is also about freedom. “My uncle was in a wheelchair and struggled to get around and I watched the joy on his face when he got his first car and was able to have some freedom. The power of this technology to provide mobility to the disabled is also why I am super-passionate about this space.”

Intel’s Silicon Valley Autonomous Vehicle Lab works with tier-one suppliers, carmakers, universities and start-ups to accelerate delivery of autonomous driving solutions.

Revving up for autonomous driving

Patti Robb is a visionary technologist and the chief strategist behind the Intel Silicon Valley Autonomous Vehicle Lab. Image: Intel

Robb said that the autonomous vehicle revolution is revving up and that by 2010, more use cases will emerge in cities, campuses and urban areas.

“Widespread adoption is going to take a little bit of time but right now, the biggest factors getting the roll-out moving are people getting exposure and experience with the technology, trusting the technology and also policy.

“We are doing a number of things in that area; we are working just like we did in the PC area, where we rolled out countless platforms that propelled the PC industry. We are working with standards bodies to put standards in place and we are also working with partners like BMW who are inducting Intel Mobileye into their vehicles.

Robb is referring to the massive $15.3bn acquisition of Israel-based Mobileye, a leader in autonomous driving technology, which was concluded in August.

Crucially, says Robb, vehicles of the future will not only be transmitters of data via 5G to other vehicles with vital real-time information, but also repositories of data.

“There are three components to this: car, connectivity and cloud. The car of tomorrow, the autonomous vehicle, is really going to be a data centre on wheels. It is pretty fascinating to think about, isn’t it?

“When you think about it, the data centre is going to be collecting and analysing terabytes of data. There are hundreds of sensors on the car and, in the lab where I work, one of the things we are doing is we are looking at different types of sensors – camera, radar, sonar, GPS, LiDAR and more.

“Why do we need all of those sensors? When you think about it, you need to be able to see a 360-degree view of what’s around your car, and think of your sensors as your eyes and ears and the data centre processor as the brain of the car, and you need all of those sensors to see around you. If you are driving to work, there are so many things to come into contact with … and you need to be able to operate whether it’s sunny, rainy, when there’s snow and ice – and each of those types of sensors has their place. And, if you think about it, there are lots of different types of things – some are close up, like bikes and pedestrians, that your car needs to see even before you do.”

The $7trn passenger economy

Crucially, Robb believes that the notion of car ownership could change as the sharing economy is embraced by car manufacturers and not just unicorns such as Lyft or Uber.

“We are doing a lot of work around individual passenger economies and we are seeing differences in generational attitudes.

“Millennials are very open to shared usage but still, older generations want to own their own car and it is associated with personal freedom.”

Robb pointed to a recent study by Intel and Strategy Analytics, which valued the economic opportunity of the passenger economy as one that will grow from $800m to $7trn as autonomous vehicles become mainstream and new services and apps emerge to support the idle time when drivers become passengers.

“If you think about it, if you are driving in an autonomous car, you are going to have so much more time to do things with that time – watch movies, have a personalised experience around what you would like to buy or interact with. A whole app economy will emerge to envision all these different uses.”

Robb said that despite the advances in technology, the spread of autonomous vehicles will be determined by policy and, crucially, safety.

“The first use cases will be city by city. We may see dedicated lanes, geo-fenced areas … because, at first, you’ll have a mix of autonomous cars and cars of today.

“In my role here at the lab, we are setting up one of the first innovation centres in the industry to have abilities like our own 5G cell site here, data centre in the cars, automation through test drives; and we look at 5G use cases for fast download and connectivity to get data from the car to the cloud with as least latency as possible.

“As well as use cases, some of the other things we are learning about are high-definition mapping and updating data – like if your car sees a pothole, it will send that information back to the cloud so other cars can learn that there is a pothole ahead and avoid a collision or accident.”

When it comes to data, regions will need specific algorithms. “Europe and roundabouts and more left-hand turns,” she laughed, recalling a recent trip to Ireland.

“The autonomous vehicle landscape will require US-specific and Europe-specific algorithms. With high-speed data offloading from the car to the cloud, we need to determine what data should stay in the car, what data should go over the network to the cloud, so we can do machine learning on that, and also be able to do deep learning and build models and take that data and pass it back to the car, so the car can learn from it and handle different driving scenarios.

“Our test vehicles allow us to understand the different compute environments, and, by building and testing the technology first-hand, we are going to be better positioned to help our customers to deliver those autonomous solutions.”

5G and securing the roads of tomorrow

No doubt the spectre of hackers infiltrating vehicles has fired up the popular imagination but, when it comes to the future of autonomous vehicles, it really is a life and death issue.

“Security is always top of mind for Intel, and our hardware security and software security solutions are being designed to protect the vehicle’s data, and we are continuing to work to improve the authenticity and integrity of data and how it is transmitted across the network.

“If you think about it, this isn’t a new problem. We’ve solved this problem for security in PCs, in smartphones, and we have a lot of people using our data centres today for very trusted applications like banking. We need to continue to work together as an industry, and technologies need to evolve to address threats and enable automakers to continuously improve security features on a vehicle in ways which they’ve never truly had the ability before.

“Our technology supports resilient, flexible security architecture that can take advantage of those over-the-air updates.”

Robb believes that safety will be the biggest contribution that autonomous driving technology will make to the world.

“There are three main contributions that autonomous driving will make: the largest one is safety, second is mobility for everybody and third is traffic reduction.

“The additional one will be the transformation of the economy; how the economy changes as a result of this and the new businesses that will spring up that don’t exist today.

“We’ve talked about how the passenger economy is spurring a potential $7trn economy – there’s going to be so many new businesses that will crop up, we probably cannot predict what they will be.

“Will there be a dining car that will come to me instead of me going to the restaurant? Or my personal AI assistant will know where I want to go, if I want to make a quick stop at a Starbucks, and the coffee will be waiting for me? It’s quite fantastic the kind of businesses that could spring up around it, enabled by all the different technologies it works across, such as robotics, machine learning, working with new types of mechanical actuation systems, 5G and [the] great potential we have there.

“With 5G, we unveiled our first 5G platform at Mobile World Congress last year to demonstrate over-the-air interoperability with Ericsson, with different use cases, low latency, sharing mission-critical information, vehicle-to-vehicle information, HD maps that come with the car. There’s a tremendous amount of things that will happen over 5G as well.”

Robb concluded: “Really, there has never been a more transformational time to be working in the autotech industry, and it will really transform economic opportunities for passengers, too.”

The post Intel’s Patti Robb: ‘Autonomous vehicles will be data centres on wheels’ appeared first on Silicon Republic.

According to Phys.org, a team of international scientists recently published a paper in the journal Nano Letters that reveals a simple and cheap solution to home energy efficiency.

With a relatively straightforward process, they have shown that glass windows can be turned into solar-powered heat screens using plasmonic nanoantennas.

Made of nickel-aluminium sandwiches, the nanoantennas are shaped like nanoellipses, which are then patterned as a solar array onto the glass.

Evidence from testing has shown that when sunlight shines onto the surface of the antennas, light is more efficiently absorbed on the front side rather than the back.

This is crucial as it allows the sunlight to be absorbed in much greater quantities from the surface facing outside and yet appears almost completely transparent to those looking from the inside or outside of the window.

Can be ‘painted’ on

Its greatest benefit, the researchers said, was not to make windows a source of solar energy, but to keep them from being cold. When you’re trying to keep a house warm in winter, cold windows act as a major heatsink and can be one of the biggest contributors to high energy bills.

This new solution will offer the ability to heat the windows by several degrees through the sun alone, therefore offsetting any wasted energy and high costs. The researchers said that it is relatively simple to apply to any windows and doesn’t cost that much to install as it is effectively ‘painted’ on.

It is also being suggested that the nanoantennas could have other applications with any surface that requires heating, possibly used in energy storage.

The next stage of research will look at how the nanoantennas could achieve even greater temperature increases by absorbing light through sources such as ultraviolet and near-infrared radiation.

The post Windows can be transformed into solar heaters with a cheap solution appeared first on Silicon Republic.