Friday, October 23, 2015

Internet of Things (IoT) Smart City Insights from Patents

Smart Traffic Control 

The use of traffic lights to control traffic flow at intersections is a long-standing means to promote traffic safety and efficiency. While traffic lights and intersection-based signs are the predominant means of controlling traffic flow, other systems of intersection-based traffic management have been the subject of some experimentation. US20140278029 illustrates the self-organizing smart traffic control system. The self-organizing smart traffic control system exploits vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication. V2V and V2I communication enables development of the dynamic traffic control plan (DTCP) by the central city traffic planner that can resolve the travel-priority conflict in the potential-conflict zone and optimize the traffic flow.

The DTCP includes a set of travel instructions that are communicated to vehicles participating in the ad-hoc network for the particular potential-conflict zone. For example, these instructions can include a sequence by which vehicles approaching from different directions may proceed through a potential-conflict zone, the speed at which vehicles approaching a conflict zone should be traveling, and so forth. One important aspect of a DTCP is that the instructions are tailored for the specific vehicles participating in a conflict and are also coordinated with the other vehicles participating in the conflict so as to resolve the conflict without incident. Additionally, the coordination can assist with optimizing vehicle flow through a potential-travel-priority conflict zone as a function of traffic volume, road conditions, known or predicted travel routes for vehicles near the conflict zone, and/or a priority status of the vehicles.

Smart Public Transportation

US20150205991 illustrates the system for smart public transportation service. The smart public transportation system includes on-vehicle devices, a management server, bus stop access points (APs), and a wired/wireless bus stop AP communication network. The on-vehicle devices are mounted within buses. The management server is connected to the buses over the Internet, i.e., the wireless communication. The bus stop APs are short distance communication APs and configured to enable information to be exchanged between the bus stop and the bus. The wired/wireless bus stop AP communication network connects the bus stop APs. The management server performs Internet access processing to connect the bus stop AP communication network and the external terminal. The management server can provide the bus stop or line guidance, transportation information, advertisement service, or a multimedia data service to the passenger terminals of the passengers on the bus. A passenger of the bus receives public transportation service via a corresponding passenger terminal during a period from the time at which the user gets on the bus to the time at which the user gets off the bus.


Smart Street Lights

US20140184100 illustrates the smart street lights that are connected via a network, and a manager can communicate with a management device of any street light via the network. The management device is a management server which controls operations of the street lights disposed in a predetermined region so as to manage and adjust power consumption by the street lights in an integrated fashion in a smart city. Further, the smart street lights system also can detect failures of illumination devices through wireless communication.

Smart Shopping Mall

Since Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs)  have widely used because of their high durability, longevity, portability, low power consumption, absence of harmful substances such as mercury, and so forth, the LED light emitting sources are becoming ubiquitous everywhere. Thus, visible light communication (VLC) with LEDs as transmitters and receivers for wireless communication can provide the IoT connectivity in many IoT applications.US20150215744 illustrates the LED VLC for the smart building positioning applications. The indoor positioning system includes modulating the light output of LED lamps installed throughout the structure. The LED light can be modulated at a fast rate that is imperceptible to the human eye. This modulation can be detected by suitably configured cameras. The modulation can include positioning data of the LED lamp. A digital camera on a handheld device in conjunction with an application can discern the modulated data. The modulation requires the placement of a microchip controller at each LED lamp undergoing modulation. The microchip, in conjunction with software, controls the fast rate modulation.

The position of the mobile device can be determined from finding the transmitted positional information in an indoor map of the structure. This map can be downloaded to the mobile device, or the mobile device can use a local area network to access a database containing the indoor map.  Exploiting the LED position systems the shoppers in a shopping mall can receive indoor navigation guide maps, product information, parking information and promotional advertisements.

Smart Safety Monitoring

US20110261202 illustrates the clustered intelligent monitoring system which use video analytics, event driven systems and policy management for the implement of the city wide safety. The city wide monitoring via implementation of large distributed video surveillance and video security system can prevent the terrorist attack, theft on the street and indoor, occurrence of crimes, car theft, non-authorized outdoor occurrence and street incident. The smart safety monitoring system uses streaming video technologies, multi-function open source software, high compression capabilities and image pattern recognition or optical character recognition. The smart safety monitoring system can be exploited by many government entities and in public places such as city monitoring and management agencies, water reservoir, shopping centers, airport facilities and management center, police stations, fire departments, power stations, bus stations, and transportation management centers and traffics monitoring and control centers, etc.

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