- [Narrator] Digi-Key Electronics presents, "City Digital".
A three-part series brought to you by
Supplyframe, Microchip Technology, and TE Connectivity.
In our first episode,
We'll Look at how enhanced awareness benefits
both public safety and transportation
in the cities of the future.
- The smart city movement is great.
What we really need is to move significantly faster.
- To not just to connect people,
but also help us to exchange data
in a more accurate way.
- [Ryan] When you hear the term "smart cities",
it evokes a more dynamic sense of assured resources.
- [Narrator] From smartphones to streetlights
to traffic management.
First responders and commuters,
new forms of connectivity and data management
are poised to transform everyday life
for the citizens of City Digital.
From the streets of Los Angeles
to the suburbs of Detroit
and across the globe.
RoadBotics is mapping and analyzing
the roads we travel everyday.
Gathering immense amounts of data
to help communities make informed decisions
about their roads and infrastructure.
- [Benjamin] Infrastructure is everywhere.
It's in the rural towns that, you know,
bring you the food from the fields
out to the city.
So like, infrastructure needs to be managed
across the entire network.
You can't just have incredible cities
and then everything else be dilapidated.
Because you won't get food,
you can't grow, you don't have power generation.
- [Narrator] Benjamin Schmidt, CEO of RoadBotics,
explains the persistent challenges
that road maintenance and repair present
for decision makers in charge of large budgets
and critical infrastructure.
- So RoadBotics were there to help sort of
maintain roads and infrastructure.
Taking very advanced technology,
deep learning, machine learning, machine vision,
and deploying it into, uh, space
or a vertical that
might not see those kinds of advanced technologies
which is roads, road maintenance, um,
and then kind of in the larger picture
infrastructure and really how to do we
manage infrastructure.
In this country, but also around the world.
I think we all want it to advance much more rapidly
so that we can get the benefits
of these kinds of technology.
Ultimately, it will be better for all of us.
Um, that's, that is their purpose.
- [Narrator] Rickard Barrefelt,
a field applications engineer from TE Connectivity,
shares with us the company's plans
for exciting new solutions at the
foundation of citywide communication and public safety.
- [Rickard] I think it was last year,
the first time that actually IoT devices
exceeded the number of mobile phone devices
for example.
But really, what we've been waiting for, I would say
is to enable mental 5G for example,
to really be able then to
connect huge amounts of nodes
all the smart meters, liquid meters,
gas meters, as well as street lighting
or charging ports and,
and the cars and etc.
5G Is really enabling a mass connection
by multiple nodes within a more
metro area and, uh,
also should, um, be able to reduce the latency.
So that you could have
better quicker calculations
for example on traffic jams, and direct routes
those for emergency responses sent to get
quicker to the accident, for example.
So, one additional trend I would talk about
is electrification of transportation market.
And this is contentiously growing,
that means everything from personal transportation,
of course, with electrical cars, but also with these
Hit Bikes, or one-wheelers, or skateboards
becoming electrified.
I think there's an extreme exponential growth of
up to 50 billion IoT nodes, uh,
within the next couple of years here.
Be installed and connected to the internet, so.
And that massive, uh, input but also
output all these devices
is what 5G will enable.
Well it's literally,
the timing is now.
And kickoff a lot of these personal devices.
- [Narrator] Future Smart Cities will leverage
autonomous vehicles for more than just transportation.
With the autonomous last mile delivery market
expected to reach 84 billion by 2030,
companies like Rollomotion are poised to provide
a valuable service for rapid delivery
and then city landscapes.
- [Ryan] We really started with, uh, two premises.
Uh, one that micro mobility was an exciting,
uh, domain where people were really moving around
cities in new ways.
And we want to participate that,
but we want to improve it as well.
We want to make, kind of the mess in the parking better,
we wanna make the ride better, more functional,
uh, safer.
Um, and we felt that the best way to do that was
to design a custom vehicle
and, excitingly, make the vehicle autonomous.
When you hear the term "Smart Cities",
it evokes a more dynamic
uh, sense of assured resources, so.
You know, literally micro mobility,
you're talking about sharing the same cars.
Certainly, we think the autonomous vehicle development
that we're doing is an important part of that,
and using the lanes of the road, you know,
in a reduced way and a more efficient way.
So "Smart" to me, really means that
a more dynamic, uh, and maybe smaller byte size
of the allocation of resources
that this city's using.
Cities are understanding how to
shape, you know, micro mobility as, uh,
try to keep the positive elements of that.
Let's try to keep it a clean offering,
try to make it safe.
Um, and then for us in delivery space,
it's much easier to sort of have
an immediate positive impact
where we have business partners,
where were really helping other businesses
you know, survive and thrive in challenging time.
- [Narrator] Juan Sivelo, European sales manager
at Microchip Technology,
explains the key role of technology plays
in the day-to-day function of modern cities.
- [Juan] More citizen, nothing new.
And you know, traffic lights system is small, right?
There's so many things that small.
The current situation has accelerated
filled with technology so we can do
most things at the edge,
we can compute things at the edge,
we can move more data through 5G
so the technologies supporting, uh, was happening.
All of this, in fact, Smart City, right?
If your home is in a city, your, uh,
business is in a city,
all of these things are interconnected
so that's where it's all coming from.
"Smart Cities" to me means, something that is
eco-friendly, which is green,
which is pedestrian, where designed for people.
Smart Cities have many things business.
- [Narrator] Tony Ng, Vice President of business development
for the APAC region at Digi-Key,
shares the company's vision for bringing
Smart City technologies to every corner of the world.
Ultimately improving the lives of people everywhere.
- [Tony] Uh, Digi-Key itself,
we're not the technology owner.
When it comes to, uh, components,
when it comes to hardware, as an example,
in fact if you look at nowadays,
we're carrying I think, uh, more than 1,500 suppliers.
So technology is actually owned by our suppliers.
And I think the goal of Digi-Key is
how we can consolidate all this information.
How can we actually help other cities
to actually reach that same level faster.
Because saying traditionally we have the technology already,
how can we enable our website?
How can we bill all this information into our
product information, how can we inform the world?
Hey you know what, certain area in the world
is already doing this.
How can we adapt to same technology and, you know,
apply it for, um, the goodness of our humanity?
- [Narrator] As technology continues
to proliferate throughout every aspect
of modern city living,
the focus on public safety and enhanced awareness
creates exciting new opportunities to improve the livelihood
for the citizens of City Digital.
In our next episode,
we look at the role of energy management
for cities and towns stepping into a smarter future.
From floating solar panels,
to innovations in battery technology.
Join us, as we meet the individuals
and organizations developing solutions
to power the cities of tomorrow.