Geotab, a provider of IoT and connected transportation, revealed new data insights highlighting the impact that COVID-19 has had on commercial vehicle activity and the flow of goods across North America. The data, which is processed from more than 2 million Geotab connected vehicles worldwide, shows that despite an overall drop in commercial traffic volume across the continent, heavy-duty trucks are still on the road and are helping to provide essential goods to communities throughout Canada and the United States.
As stay-at-home and isolation orders have been implemented across many North American cities, states and provinces, Geotab examined the effects of these changes on commercial vehicle activity. The findings depict that while overall traffic volume in most commercial vehicle types continues to decline day-by-day, heavy-duty vehicles have recorded the lowest decline, with 78% of normal activity on March 27, 2020 compared to baselines taken from February 1 to March 15, 2020.
Though commercial traffic has shown a decline overall, the flow of essential goods around grocery stores has recorded the least impact. The data highlights that while commercial vehicle movement surrounding warehouses and retail stores has dropped 40-45%, the flow of goods to grocery stores has only declined by 22% since March 15, 2020.
“While many communities across North America and the world are declaring a state of emergency and are mandating the closure of non-essential businesses, trucking and logistics companies are continuing to deliver the goods that we rely on every single day,” said Neil Cawse, CEO at Geotab. “We at Geotab send our sincere gratitude to all truck drivers, along with health care workers, grocery store employees and many more who are continuing to provide the services and goods that we need.”
Data also shows that while fuel fill ups have declined rapidly in all other commercial vehicle types, including cars and light-duty vehicles, heavy-duty truck fill ups remain very similar to prior to the outbreak across both Canada and the U.S. at nearly 100 % of their normal volumes before the pandemic.
“Examining different connected car data sets helps provide some clarity and understanding during unprecedented times such as this,” said Mike Branch, VP Data and Analytics at Geotab. “As we move forward through the coming days and weeks, Geotab is committed to utilising our resources to provide data-driven insights that may be helpful for our customers, partners and Resellers, decision makers across the continent and the general population as a whole.”
A new study from Juniper Research found that the total number of IoT connections will reach 83 billion by 2024, rising from 35 billion connections in 2020. This represents a growth of 130% over the next 4 years. The research identified the industrial sector as a key driver of this growth. It forecast that this expansion will
Saelig Company, Inc. has announced the availability of Abeeway Asset Trackers, which use multiple location technologies (GPS, Low-power GPS, Wi-Fi, and BLE) to allow accuracy, speed, and indoor/outdoor use.
Proprietary Abeeway technology sends GPS calculations to the cloud, making location tracking faster and extremely energy-efficient. To optimise battery life, Abeeway devices use the most cost-effective connectivity and integrated sensors to enable smart multi-mode behavior, adaptable to individualised situations:
Motion Tracking: real-time position when motion is detected
Start/End: positioning at motion start and end events
Fix on demand: get position only when needed
Activity tracking: monitor activity rate with embedded sensors
Two Abeeway tracker types are currently available: the Micro Tracker and the Industrial Tracker. The Micro Tracker is a very low power location tracker which combines GPS, Wi-Fi, LoRa, and BLE technologies to offer outdoor positioning (GPS) with 10m accuracy as well as indoor positioning (Wi-Fi sniffing and triangulation) with 30m accuracy and automatic wireless detection.
The Micro Tracker incorporates proprietary low power GPS technology (multi-patented Abeeway AGPS) to offer extended use in a tiny small device, with up to 3 year battery life before recharging. Recheargable via microUSB for intense daily use, this product is used worldwide by telecom companies, insurance companies, medical equipment users, food suppliers, as well as for personnel and small equipment tracking. The Micro Tracker can locate its position in 10sec versus 1min for conventional GPS. It offers excellent sensitivity even in bad conditions, and up to 10 times the powered life of ordinary GPS products.
The Industrial Tracker is a low power industrial tracker with the same performance as the Micro Tracker, but with an active “fit-and-forget” battery life of up to 10 years. The use of three location technologies (GPS, assisted GPS, and Wi-Fi) guarantees seamless outdoor/indoor geolocation. This makes it useful for transport, vehicles, trucks, public works, construction, logistics, supply chain management, security, and general equipment asset management.
The GPS mode is accurate up to 5 meters, with a location time of 15sec for a hot start and 1min for a cold start. The assisted GPS mode is accurate up to 10m with a location time of 10sec. The Wi-Fi mode is accurate up to 30m with a location time of 5sec. Additional parameters that can be logged include: temperature and pressure monitoring, and movement via the integrated 3-axis accelerometer.
Abeeway also offers an optional web/mobile application and a SaaS to follow their trackers, change settings, request a position, or create geo-fencing, sending an SMS message or email when a tracker enters a defined zone. Two geolocation modes are available: “on-demand” when GPS is used, and “regular” with periodic location at regular, configurable intervals.
Applications for Abeeway trackers include: locate machinery, tools or construction material; detect equipment fleet location and monitor equipment utilisation; detect asset theft; optimise transportation supply; track vehicles, pallets, containers, dumpsters, and railcars; locate warehouse parts; find vehicles in parking lots; personnel safety and security (geofencing ‘no-go zones’) with real-time location indoors/outdoors and SOS button problem alert; livestock management and farm equipment monitoring, etc.
Leveraging high battery life capabilities and low total cost of ownership, the Abeeway trackers provide a cost-efficient solution for tracking assets using LoRaWAN connectivity and embedded geolocation intelligence. This is a simple, fast and ready-to-go tracking solution, creating an instant ‘track and trace’ answer for most location challenges.
WEEK IN IoT – I get twitchy at times of national or international crisis when I hear companies telling us how much they are doing to support people who are truly suffering. It’s not that I wish they wouldn’t offer assistance – far from it, says Jeremy Cowan, I admire their altruism. I just don’t believe we
The fleet transport and logistics industries have long been a target for electronic Subscriber Identity Module (eSIM) providers, says freelance technology writer,Antony Savvas. Here he looks at how obstacles to take-up are potentially being mitigated.
An eSIM can offer consumers and enterprise customers the freedom and flexibility to roam through different territories using the same SIM credentials, without having to use a changeable physical SIM card. A prime advantage is that the eSIM can connect to the best performing network at the best price.
Not surprisingly, when the technology first appeared a few years ago, some industry watchers believed that take-up would be stalled as mobile operators would do their best to keep their customers to themselves, instead of sharing them through eSIMs.
The market
Whether that was the case is a matter of opinion, although market figures from analysts should be considered. MarketsandMarkets projects the global eSIM market will reach almost US$1 billion (€0.9 billion) in revenues by 2023.
The overall market – including consumer devices – it says, was valued at $180 million (€163 million) in 2017, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 31% between 2018 and 2023 taking it to $978 million(€884 million).
Gerhard Loots
A more recent report from ResearchAndMarkets though, says the global eSIM market will grow at a staggering CAGR of over 90% between 2019 and 2025. It says the market crossed the $700 million (€632 million) mark last year, with demand increasing in areas including connected cars, consumer electronics and IoT devices.
But it points out that few of the major technology companies, including Apple, Google, Samsung and Huawei, have released devices that have any eSIM capability. Although Google’s Android framework has started providing standard application program interfaces (APIs) for accessing eSIMs and managing subscription profiles since the Android 9 operating system.
Tony Shakib
The analyst also points out that several operators have already got behind eSIMs despite the threat of churn, because of advantages to them – including reduced cost, the opportunity to actually increase subscribers through new services and improved security solutions. NTT Docomo, AT&T, Etisalat, Vodafone and Telefonica are among those to climb aboard.
“Increasing R&D on connected vehicles and autonomous vehicles will fuel the demand for eSIM during the forecast period,” says ResearchAndMarkets.
The ecosystem
If network operators can benefit through retaining potentially lucrative customers, more operators will potentially embrace eSIMs, particularly if the telecoms industry can embed itself into a decent ecosystem to support services.
But for some, the operators still have to get their billing systems in order to enjoy mass take-up in the transport industry. Neil Hamilton, chief business development officer at IoT connectivity-as-a-service firm Thingstream.io, says: “eSIMs are a great concept for users of data services given they in theory can be steered onto the optimum network in any country, thus reducing data costs. “However, these data costs still remain unpredictable and can result in enterprise bill shock.”
Yuval Mayron
And, he adds: “While eSIMs enable some flexibility, it is ultimately controlled by a remote provisioning service, of which there are many and these are not standardised.”
That said, security services firm Thales, Australian telco Telstra, open source hardware and software company Arduino, and a small company called Microsoft are doing their bit to build the aforementioned ecosystem, to help iron out security issues and other headaches when it comes to eSIMs.
Within the Interne tof Things (IoT) ecosystem, billions of devices collect, process and send data to the cloud, where a range of different IoT services are executed. To enable security, the IoT cloud service must have absolute trust in data received from connected devices. Equally, devices need to trust the cloud.
This is only possible if the device and server are mutually authenticated. However, the new partners said that the IoT devices market is so fragmented – with a patchwork of different operating systems and chips being utilised – that security services scalability and duplication are “very limited”.
Some trust
They have developed a system that enables trusted and secure end-to-end communications between devices and the cloud. The technology enables instant and standardised mutual authentication between a device and a cloud platform via cellular networks, while fully-complying with GSMA IoT SAFE security specifications.
Microsoft has integrated the IoT SAFE solution within its Azure IoT Hub and has also provided Azure Stream Analytics and its Cosmos DB and Power BI services to quickly enable the development of safe end-to-end IoT applications.
The level of trust enabled by the new solution is reached by a “security-by-design” approach for any IoT devices based on eSIM technology.
As soon as an IoT device is switched on, any eSIM featuring Thales’s IoT SAFE application is automatically and securely provisioned. Once the IoT device gets a proper digital certificate created and stored in the eSIM, then a trusted communication between the device and the server is permitted.
Tony Shakib, general manager for Azure IoT business acceleration at Microsoft, said: “By bringing together each IoT technology layer – device, software, network and cloud – we can deliver a more streamlined approach to IoT security. This allows customers and partners to focus on creating business value from their solutions while ensuring their IoT deployments remain secure.”
Gerhard Loots, global IoT solutions executive at Telstra, said: “The key role of GSMA IoT SAFE specifications is to deliver scalable and future-proof IoT security for cellular networks. Being able to offer standardised easy-to-implement IoT security to our customers is a huge leap forward for all use cases.”
The opportunity
Yuval Mayron, general manager for Internet of Things at communications software and services provider Amdocs, confirms that such ecosystems are the way forward. He says: “There is a need to manage many channels and stakeholders across the eSIM market. In all of these segments, communication service providers (CSPs) need to be able to connect the entire ecosystem and orchestrate all the processes, while providing excellent customer service and support.
“This is the challenge when we look at eSIMs and it is a big challenge for CSPs to address, however the rewards for doing so will also be great.”
The author is freelance technology writer, Tony Savvas.
Hitachi Capital Corporation, Yokogawa Electric Corporation, and amnimo Inc., a subsidiary of Yokogawa, have struck a new partnership agreement. The aim is to provide new services by adding Industrial IoT (IIoT) to each company’s technologies, know-how, and lease equipment. The three companies will launch a proof of concept (PoC) to realise services that solve customers’ issues and meet
Hitachi Capital Corporation, Yokogawa Electric Corporation, and amnimo Inc., a subsidiary of Yokogawa, have struck a new partnership agreement. The aim is to provide new services by adding Industrial IoT (IIoT) to each company’s technologies, know-how, and lease equipment.
The three companies will launch a proof of concept (PoC) to realise services that solve customers’ issues and meet their needs.
Overview of the partnership
In recent years, the advancement of network technology and reduction in cost of large-volume data transmission have improved the IIoT environment in manufacturing, accelerating efforts to improve productivity and add value to services. On the other hand, there are big obstacles to the further spread of IIoT such as the difficulty of guaranteeing its effectiveness and the shortage of personnel with necessary expertise within the organisations.
In light of these circumstances, Hitachi Capital, Yokogawa, and amnimo entered into a comprehensive partnership agreement with an aim to satisfy customers’ needs with comprehensive services ranging from the visualisation of on-site issues to the proposal and implementation of appropriate IIoT devices, consultation based on analysis results, and finance. By combining lease equipment offered by Hitachi Capital with data measurement IIoT services by amnimo, the companies will provide high value-added services such as the measurement of operating status data and offering consultation on the efficient use of equipment.
They will offer comprehensive and flexible proposals to customers in a wide range of industries by taking advantage of the strengths of each company: the finance function using Hitachi Capital’s product knowledge, the highly reliable IIoT architecture offered by Yokogawa, and amnimo’s proposal capability regarding IIoT solutions that do not limit the manufacturer. Hitachi Capital will offer consulting services using the measurement data, and amnimo will provide an operating environment that integrates the device and cloud domains as well as manage and use data obtained through the devices.
The three companies will launch a PoC for the services on March 26, 2020, whereby amnimo’s IIoT devices will be installed on Hitachi Capital’s lease assets in the manufacturing sectors, etc. to visualise operating status of the lease assets and verify the effectiveness of the services using them.
Furthermore, in terms of data analysis, the companies are also planning to work with other partners including the Hitachi Group, depending on customers’ issues or the type of data obtained. The companies aim to commence a full-scale service by the end of FY2020 and are also considering the overseas expansion of the services.
Hitachi Capital, Yokogawa, and amnimo will be committed to solving customers’ issues through the usage of obtained data, such as the operating status of lease equipment, and the provision of related consulting services.
PoC overview
The aim is to contribute to solving customers’ issues by installing amnimo’s devices on lease equipment offered by Hitachi Capital and then visualising its operating status and environmental information. Specific examples of the PoC are as follows:
Count the number of viewers and monitor people flow by installing a dynamic monitoring sensor on digital signage. Use the analysis results to support customers’ marketing activities.
Install an IIoT device on an injection molding machine* to monitor the mold temperature. Analyse such as the correlation between the temperature and production volume and use the results to support customers to improve productivity.
Hitachi Capital Corporation, Yokogawa Electric Corporation, and amnimo Inc., a subsidiary of Yokogawa, have struck a new partnership agreement. The aim is to provide new services by adding Industrial IoT (IIoT) to each company’s technologies, know-how, and lease equipment.
The three companies will launch a proof of concept (PoC) to realise services that solve customers’ issues and meet their needs.
Overview of the partnership
In recent years, the advancement of network technology and reduction in cost of large-volume data transmission have improved the IIoT environment in manufacturing, accelerating efforts to improve productivity and add value to services. On the other hand, there are big obstacles to the further spread of IIoT such as the difficulty of guaranteeing its effectiveness and the shortage of personnel with necessary expertise within the organisations.
In light of these circumstances, Hitachi Capital, Yokogawa, and amnimo entered into a comprehensive partnership agreement with an aim to satisfy customers’ needs with comprehensive services ranging from the visualisation of on-site issues to the proposal and implementation of appropriate IIoT devices, consultation based on analysis results, and finance. By combining lease equipment offered by Hitachi Capital with data measurement IIoT services by amnimo, the companies will provide high value-added services such as the measurement of operating status data and offering consultation on the efficient use of equipment.
They will offer comprehensive and flexible proposals to customers in a wide range of industries by taking advantage of the strengths of each company: the finance function using Hitachi Capital’s product knowledge, the highly reliable IIoT architecture offered by Yokogawa, and amnimo’s proposal capability regarding IIoT solutions that do not limit the manufacturer. Hitachi Capital will offer consulting services using the measurement data, and amnimo will provide an operating environment that integrates the device and cloud domains as well as manage and use data obtained through the devices.
The three companies will launch a PoC for the services on March 26, 2020, whereby amnimo’s IIoT devices will be installed on Hitachi Capital’s lease assets in the manufacturing sectors, etc. to visualise operating status of the lease assets and verify the effectiveness of the services using them.
Furthermore, in terms of data analysis, the companies are also planning to work with other partners including the Hitachi Group, depending on customers’ issues or the type of data obtained. The companies aim to commence a full-scale service by the end of FY2020 and are also considering the overseas expansion of the services.
Hitachi Capital, Yokogawa, and amnimo will be committed to solving customers’ issues through the usage of obtained data, such as the operating status of lease equipment, and the provision of related consulting services.
PoC overview
The aim is to contribute to solving customers’ issues by installing amnimo’s devices on lease equipment offered by Hitachi Capital and then visualising its operating status and environmental information. Specific examples of the PoC are as follows:
Count the number of viewers and monitor people flow by installing a dynamic monitoring sensor on digital signage. Use the analysis results to support customers’ marketing activities.
Install an IIoT device on an injection molding machine* to monitor the mold temperature. Analyse such as the correlation between the temperature and production volume and use the results to support customers to improve productivity.
