Hello and welcome to the show!
My name is Alex and this is TechFlow!
Before we get into the video, welcome to 2017!
Let's do this!
So, Here invited me over to CES to talk about their new technology and can we all just take
a moment to appreciate this incredible booth?
Inside the booth, there were various demos set up all the way from VR to automated robot
parks (we'll come into those a little bit later) but first, let's brush over what Here
call the "future mobility visualizer."
This interactive table has been designed to demonstrate common trends in a city both now
and in the future.
It's pretty much a look in to the future of how Here can plan mobility for the future.
So, on this immersive, touchscreen table, we can see a map of a city in Germany displaying
everything from cars, bikes and public transport.
And with all this location data, Here can gather the average speed of traffic, things
like how the weather affects transportation (for example, more taxis on the road and less
bikes) as well as CO2 emissions and much, much more.
Here are also trying to demonstrate what they call "optimal routes."
To put it simply, for example, to take you on your route, so let's say from your current
location right now to your end destination (let's say you want to go to town), well it
can make sure that the lights are green, make you avoid traffic jams and they're even trying
to take it a step further with public services like the refuse system only picking up bins
that are 70% or more full.
Now, the reason they do this is to keep the lorry bins off the road and put the lorry
bins on a route, an automatic route, which is going to take them exactly where they need
to go - to only go and collect the bins that are 70% or more full.
This, well, in conjunction with reducing CO2 emissions, helps traffic as well.
The next demo is titled "Here HD live map."
This is a data enriched map for autonomous vehicles.
Now, this is cool.
Now, by using sensors in cars, Here are already working with Audi, BMW and Mercedes already
- three massively recognisable car brands.
So, with these sensors cars can report things like free and taken parking spots to other
users and not just notify others there are road works but tell them the exact lanes that are
closed and tell them if there's been an ambulance spotted - all automatically by the car's sensors.
So, for example, right now, say if there's a traffic jam outside or some road works,
you know, they may put up a nice, little sign to tell you that there's going to be some
roadworks in a mile or so but you don't know what those roadworks are going to be, you
don't know what that traffic jam's going to be, you don't know if someone's been injured,
if there's an ambulance involved or if there's two lanes merging into one lane (and that's
how the road works are) or if it's temporary traffic lights.
Well, with these sensors in cars, the cars that are near to the incident already can
alert the cars coming up behind them that ahead, there's temporary traffic lights or
they can alert them that all the lanes are merging into one so everyone needs to slow down.
Really intelligent stuff!
The next demo was "VR."
I put on the goggles and walked through a visual demo of the cars with sensor data reporting
back to a server letting other vehicles know about free parking spots, traffic incidents
and the ability to have LED road signals to be changed on the fly to warn people about
potential accidents and things like lane merging.
By using the sensors in the cars that we've already talked about, Here can identify things
like natural hazards such as icy roads by accessing the car's ABS data and reporting
it back to cars that are on the same route.
So, say if there's been four or five cars that have gone over a patch of ice on the
road and it's activated all four of those cars' ABS systems, the system can then alert
cars behind them that, well, "Watch out because the four cars in front have had their ABS
activated and there must be something slippy on the road - you may want to slow down."
Now, the last and most simple demonstration was a scaled down warehouse with robots navigating
the space and moving and dropping containers to designated locations.
Here were demonstrating precision down to a few centimetres.
Really precise!
Here were explaining that this is just a scaled down warehouse - now think about it in the
future; imagine if there's warehouses but it's all automated; you've got machines going
and picking up containers and dropping things off where they need to be and it's all automated
- not a single human involved at all.
It's amazing to get a glimpse into the future of mobility - how it makes roads safer, saves
lives, cuts down on traffic jams and emissions whilst saving time and money at the same time.
Now, if you want to try and experience a little bit of this for yourself, Here actually do
have a navigation app - you can download it - it's called "Here we go."
You can download it from the app store.
It has features like offline maps, optimum ways of travelling, live traffic information
and nearby points of interest.
Now, if you're super interested in this sort of stuff, I'm going to put Here's blog post
in the description - you can go ahead and check that out if you want to but, again,
a massive thank you to Here for sending me out to Las Vegas for CES and letting me wander
around and demonstrate to me their awesome booth and what they're doing to the future
of transportation - absolutely incredible stuff!
But for now guys, my name's been Alex, this has been TechFlow and we'll catch you in the next one!