If you were asked to name one industry vertical with a lot
to gain from connecting its devices, analyzing their data, then using these
insights to create new services, what would it be? Smart cities? Manufacturing?
Healthcare? How about transport? It’s benefited hugely over the years from
machine-to-machine communications (M2M), particularly in-vehicle telematics.
But the game is always moving on.
Here, Jeremy Cowan talks to Alicja Strzemieczna, the
newly-promoted industrial sales director for the Internet of Things (IoT) in
Central and Eastern Europe at Advantech.
Jeremy Cowan, IoTNowTransport.com: Nowadays, the
transport industry is developing connected cars, vehicle-to-infrastructure
communications, standalone 5G networks in ports, even nano-satellite connectivity
for ships at sea. The possibilities for connected transport are wide and
getting wider.
At IoT Now, we put our money where our mouth is and launched
this website, IoT Now Transport three years ago, as the first industry vertical
to be served by its own dedicated IoT website. So, it’s a pleasure to welcome
my guest Alicja Strzemieczna, from Advantech, sponsor of this interview, and a
Taiwan-based company with deep experience in providing customers with connected
transport solutions.
Alicja Strzemieczna, Advantech: Thank you, Jeremy.
Nice to e-meet you.
Jeremy: Alicja, transport is such a huge market. What’s
your strategy for serving such a diverse industry?
Alicja: Jeremy, IoT is the only disruptive technology
of the 21st century where all technology companies are really living
disruption. Advantech is one of the disruptors. The past months have made us
realize that we need to be prepared for change. Actually, managing the
ever-increasing speed of change driven by trends and emerging technologies is the
key challenge of decision-makers on the way towards a new reality. The main
question is how to use IoT to travel more comfortably, safer, faster, and
easier. So, thanks to IoT being smart, predictive, problem-solving, people will
gain richer experience from the products and services they buy.
There’s a new era of intelligence and highly efficient
commodities, like self-driving cars and trains, smart devices, robust security
systems, and many erstwhile futuristic gadgets. Actually, it’s already a
reality. Before this fully autonomous future occurs, we can use IoT to enable
smarter road mapping, to avoid congestion, and also many other applications in
ITS (integrated transport systems), in railway and infrastructure applications.
I think that IoT in transportation is about bringing together digitalization
and mobility.
Advantech has become one of the world’s largest suppliers of
advanced embedded computing technology, along with equally comprehensive
solutions in communication, sensing, and cloud computing. Currently, we have
four discrete product divisions and more than 10,000 industrial-grade
computing, communication, and sensor interface platforms, alongside associated
configuration management and application software. Our global network of
service centers means we have a presence in 27 countries worldwide and all the
time we’re growing.
Although our global reach is impressive, our focus is on
local support near to our customers. We use local design and manufacturing
service teams to complement the capabilities of our headquarters in Taiwan, in
order to create added value for customers. For example, our local experts get
involved in the customer concept base in order to evaluate different approaches
and check feasibility.
The aim is to create a concept that we can implement with
minimal risk according to the costs. Our teams are able to expand this
step-by-step model progressively to implement the entire development, including
manufacturing locally or in one of our factories in Taiwan or China. We are a
technology leader, innovating and co-creating together with the consultancy
company, vendors, local integrators, and software partners.
Jeremy: So, what are the key trends emerging in the
transport sector?
Alicja: AIoT is the newest trend, we call it
Artificial Intelligence of Things. We provide a comprehensive product solution
from data collected, and data connection to data computing, and control. Each project
in the transportation area requires several integrations with existing and/or
new systems, and many vendors’ equipment, of course, with many different
applications. Advantech has a wide hardware portfolio, it’s true, but we do not
have everything.
In recognition of this, our main strategy at Advantech is
co-partnerships with specialist vendors and integrators to deliver all-in-one
solutions. Local operators require a full ready-to-run solution, based on the
newest technology. The truth is that no one company in the world can deliver
the full scope of IoT solutions. So, system integrators, whether global or
local, should focus on certain sectors and application areas where they really
feel very strong.
And vendors such as Advantech should work with local
integrators, spreading solutions together to different end-users. You see,
almost every single day, a new generation of people establish a start-up. Many
of them are very innovative and we really need to do everything to help them to
develop a greater eco-partnership collaboration model. Actually, for me, this
is the only strategy for Advantech, if not the only one for everyone.
I can point to multiple trends emerging today. The first one
is security, the availability of more sophisticated security features in less
complex devices. So, things like support to hardware base unit devices ID, crypto key storage, and hardware acceleration for encryption, to move to
IP-based comms and adoption of standard methods for authentication and secure
connectivity.
The next one is remote touch provisioning. What does that
mean? Being able to ‘descale’ the installation process means that new systems
can be integrated as part of regular maintenance work without needing any
specialists or new technicians.
A third trend is a remote management. Transport has a large number of devices in any given system, especially buses, for example, and the ability to make changes, upgrades, or security patches remotely and over-the-air can significantly reduce the cost of ownership over the system's lifetime.
Here, for example, we have a perfect solution as software
called Web Access DMP, which everyone can use to manage and monitor
connectivity devices. This is doubly true where remote access can be given not
only to the gateway devices installed on the board but also to all the
connected devices in a secure and controlled way. For this, we have a solution
called Web Access VPN, which is dedicated to VPN connections.
Trend four is strength; this is higher onboard integration.
Historically, there have been a number of coexisting independent systems, like
ticketing, CCTV, infotainment, driver communication, and different kinds of
diagnostics. Increasingly, these are being integrated using gateways to provide
a single connectivity path shared by all systems. Train and tram builders are
looking to increase the capacity to fit more passengers inside. This explains the
rising demand for such onboard systems. This kind of integration only concerns
non-safety-critical functions.
Looking towards other industries, there is a trend toward
the multi-service gateway, where virtualization allows the systems to be turned
into applications, which are then simply hosted on a single shared
infrastructure. It makes it much easier to have an overarching security and
connectivity strategy and again, reducing long-term operational costs.
The sixth is onboard AI. We’re talking about AI all the
time. This is using inference engines to help with incident detection,
passenger count and flow management, and physical security; for example, left
object detection, crowd formation, unusual behavior of people or anything. It
can be used with integration of the street address site, Passenger Information
System, CCTV, or anonymization.
For example, we have a case in one of the airports where AI
blanks the faces of the people and analyses the behavior without the face.
This gives us the possibility to predict and analyze people’s behavior
automatically.
The seventh trend is that for train manufacturers
standardization is important to increase efficiency and lower costs. But
we all know that for the railway business in general, it’s very difficult to
create a standardized solution. Because I have rich experience in
transportation in Advantech over the last 12 years, I can say that around 90%
of hardware and solutions need to be customized. It’s really a lot, and each
local operator has local project needs.
Ref: https://iotnowtransport.com/2021/08/20/79506-connected-transport-specialist-sees-9-global-trends-in-internet-of-things/