Technology & IT | Monday 19 October, 2015 4:30 pm |

As the Middle East moves toward becoming a connected society through more smart and safe city initiatives, Huawei has launched its Agile Internet of Things (IoT) solution for vehicles at GITEX Technology Week, to help make public transportation safer for citizens. 

 

In line with its goal to transform the region’s smart city vision from concept to reality, Huawei’s Smart In-Vehicle IoT Security solution is the first step to offering ultimate control for public transportation leaders and emergency services operators. The In-Vehicle IoT solution, which uses Huawei’s Agile IoT Gateway as a mission-critical component, offers a variety of services such as in-vehicle video surveillance, accurate passenger tracking, emergency services communication, real-time vehicle health data analysis and even allows for a host of multi-media services for passenger’s entertainment. 

 

Mainly developed by Huawei for connecting public transport vehicles and school buses, road transport authorities can now easily monitor, track and communicate with their fleet of vehicles, ensuring increased safety for citizens. 

 

By enabling high-speed internet connectivity to passenger vehicles, users can access high-definition in-vehicle video surveillance to monitor driver and passenger status, analyze driver performance, highlight potential safety issues such as passengers not wearing seatbelts and even allow for swift connectivity to emergency services in the event of a road collision or accident. 

 

In the interest of providing holistic visibility for road transportation leaders, Huawei’s IoT solution provides authorities real-time data about the health of their vehicles on the road, offering data such as fuel consumption, tire pressure and engine performance, which can minimize the risk of an engineering or mechanical failure. 

 

Safder Nazir, Vice President of IoT and Smart Cities at Huawei Middle East said: “The boundaries of the Internet of Things are quickly expanding and our world is transforming with the development of smart and safe city technology. We are excited to bring our In-Vehicle IoT solution for use on Middle East roads, welcoming in the era of smart vehicles that integrate wireless communications and automotive electronic technologies. The IoT solution enables public transport buses and other transportation vehicles to exist in a seamless wireless mobile environment, so that users are able to utilize the connected benefits, ensuring greater levels of control and safety on the road.”

 

The Huawei Smart In-Vehicle IoT solution mainly covers School Buses and Public Transport Commuting Vehicles but can also be implemented within Police Affairs Vehicles, Emergency Response and Government Vehicles – essentially any vehicle that poses a high requirement on passenger and driver safety.

 

One of the key features of Huawei’s Smart In-vehicle IoT solution is its streamlined connectivity to emergency services in the event of a crisis. An emergency button is mounted inside the vehicle that the driver can activate, which sends out an alarm. Through the Geographic Information System (GIS), the circumstance can be detected in real-time and the in-vehicle video surveillance data can be quickly accessed ensuring that the relevant measures can be taken to guarantee passenger safety. 

 

The IoT solution utilizes Huawei’s AR515 agile gateway and seamlessly works alongside its Agile Controller to centrally manage network-wide devices and deliver services. This provides open Northbound Interfaces (NBIs), through which third-party software can be quickly integrated. 

 

Huawei predicts that by 2025, a total of 100 billion connections will be generated globally as new sensors are connected each day. With the continuing development of the Internet of Things and the network infrastructure needed to ensure widespread connectivity, Huawei believes that safe city ICT solutions like its Smart In-Vehicle solution can make a significant impact to people’s lives if they are supported by wider Smart City initiatives. 

 

“Improving the quality of life of citizens and businesses in the Middle East can certainly be benchmarked and improvement targets can be set. However, the ability to measure, monitor and make progress on these goals will only be enabled by more city systems being connected. That requires expanding network capacity and coverage, leveraging existing investments, and alternative business and operating models,” continued Nazir. 

 

While Huawei is focused on developing IoT infrastructure products and solutions, it is also committed to establishing an industry application-oriented IoT ecosystem through collaborating with upstream and downstream partners.  

 

Earlier at GITEX, Huawei has also outlined plans to develop the future of 4.5G broadband to support capacity demand and the increasing number of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) connections expediting the development of IoT-based applications.