Month: October 2020

Energy harvesting brings ‘battery that never dies’ claim for IoT applications

Xidas IoT becomes the first to create a cost-effective solution for the Internet of Things (IoT) market’s major issue: battery life. The increasing benefit of wireless sensors in the industrial and automation world is being restricted by the pain of replacing their batteries. The solution according to Xidas is its new vibration-based energy harvesting product

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The shortlist nominees for the 2020 IoT Global Awards are…

WeKnow Media Ltd, the award organisers, are pleased to announce the shortlist nominees of the 2020 IoT Global Awards! “It’s a sign of the IoT Global Awards’ growth and the maturity of the Internet of Things that the Editors have faced their biggest challenge yet in shortlisting the award Entries,” says Jeremy Cowan, chair of

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Cognizant to acquire Bright Wolf, expanding IIoT services, smart products and Industry 4.0 expertise

Cognizant is to acquire Bright Wolf, a privately-held technology services provider specialising in custom Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solutions for Fortune 1000 companies. Bright Wolf is certified by all major cloud providers and acknowledged as an expert in IoT. The company is a Microsoft Gold Partner and has been named an Amazon Web Services Advanced

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Route Masters to build integrated public transport platform for African megacities

Route Masters, based at the European Space Agency BIC UK in Harwell in Oxfordshire, has signed up to the national SPRINT business support programme to develop an innovative transport management solution for African cities.

Funding from SPRINT will enable Route Masters to collaborate with the University of Leicester on building a full suite of technology tools and algorithmic data models. This will help the company to achieve its aim of becoming the largest integrated public transport platform for emerging African megacities.

Route Masters is developing an algorithm based on single-band Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning within cities. The solution will deliver transport flow models superimposed on satellite-based city maps.

The technology utilises applied mathematics to build digital route maps that will accurately deliver journey times and modes for city planning tools and mobile navigation applications for consumers.

This data fusion project will combine dual-band GNSS with single-band GNSS and satellite-derived city maps. The solution will be leveraged to deliver planning and control intelligence services and consumer services and, after University of Leicester validation, it will be tested and deployed as an active prototype in Lagos, Nigeria.

The University of Leicester will provide Route Masters with expertise in algorithms and software development for data-driven space projects as well as high-performance computational (HPC) facilities.

The project will be funded by a UK government grant from the £4.8 million (€5.28 million) SPRINT (SPace Research and Innovation Network for Technology) programme that provides unprecedented access to university space expertise and facilities. SPRINT helps businesses through the commercial exploitation of space data and technologies.

Meir Wachs, CEO of Route Masters says, “We’re a highly ambitious sustainable business with the goal of creating the largest technology-enabled data platform for transport on the African continent. The support of SPRINT will enable us to develop our technology in specific areas, working with the Leicester mathematics school to accelerate our development in certain key areas and to build a robust and rigorous solution that can make an actual impact on the world.”

Alberto Paganini, lecturer in Applied Mathematics at the University of Leicester adds, “Projects such as this SPRINT one with Route Masters are of great benefit to the University as they enable us to engage with vibrant companies and transfer our knowledge into commercial innovative applications.

“We’re bringing advanced mathematical methods, data analysis and software development to the project, not only supporting the commercial development of Route Masters’ technology but also allowing us to integrate the insight gained into our curriculum to further enhance the employability skills of our students,” Paganini comments.

Muyiwa Omopariola, lead transport analyst at the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) also expressed his support for the project, noting, “I greatly support technology innovation in the transport sector, especially in Lagos and across the emerging world. We look forward to seeing their continued progress.”


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Project Endeavour begins first public autonomous vehicle trials in Oxford

Project Endeavour has reached a key milestone as the first live trials of its autonomous vehicle fleet begin this week on roads in Oxford. This is said by the project’s backers to bring the deployment of commercial autonomous vehicles in the UK one step closer.

Project Endeavour a Government-backed research & development project will run until Autumn 2021 with live tests in three major UK cities. The trials will demonstrate autonomous driving in a variety of urban and city environments and will develop engagement models with local authorities and communities to help them prepare for the future launch of autonomous vehicle services.

The consortium, part-funded by the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and delivered in partnership with Innovate UK, is using a combination of advanced simulations and on-road demonstrations to help accelerate and scale the deployment and adoption of autonomous vehicles.

A fleet of six Ford Mondeo vehicles, enabled by Oxbotica to be capable of Level 4 autonomous driving, will complete a nine-mile round trip from Oxford Parkway station to Oxford’s main train station. Trials will be run at all times of day and night, allowing Oxbotica’s autonomous vehicles to experience a range of traffic scenarios from morning commutes to school runs, in a range of weather conditions.

Launched in September 2019, the project has brought together Oxbotica, a global provider in autonomous software, urban innovators DG Cities and Immense, a transport simulation company. Ahead of the public trials, three new consortium partners have been added to Project Endeavour: the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), the British Standards Institution (BSI) and Oxfordshire County Council.

The trio of new partners will focus on the development of a new safety assurance assessment scheme against PAS 1881 standard for public autonomous trials, helping inspire trust and define a consistent approach to safety that will enable future deployments to happen efficiently without slowing down the rate of innovation.

Camilla Fowler, head of Automation at TRL, says, “Trials of Level 4 vehicles are an important milestone, keeping the UK at the head of the field in bringing the benefits of this technology into mainstream use. These exciting trials, and what we learn about assuring safety and encouraging interoperability will open up new opportunities for many more research demonstrations across the UK, which are the forerunners to the full-scale public trials so eagerly awaited.”

Matt Page, managing director UK and Ireland, Assurance at BSI, says, “We’re delighted to be a part of this collaborative project, where we’ll be applying our expertise in certification to research an assessment methodology for the safe trialling of connected and autonomous vehicles on public roads. This technology presents a huge opportunity for the automotive sector and we’re committed to working together with industry to help accelerate innovation whilst ensuring safety.”

Laura Peacock, innovation hub manager at Oxfordshire County Council says, “It is exciting to be part of Project Endeavour. Oxfordshire County Council’s Innovation Hub has been at the forefront of autonomous mobility for the last four years. The progress that has been made in the Connected Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) ecosystem is huge, moving from simulation, trials in isolated environments and now to the first live on-road public trials in Oxford.

We are working with partners to create a systematic approach for other local authorities to engage and interact with CAV trials in their regions, which brings us much closer to CAV deployments becoming a reality to bring benefit to our communities and UK PLC.”

Project Endeavour builds on the DRIVEN consortium, which demonstrated the capabilities of a fleet of self-driving vehicles in Oxfordshire’s and London’s challenging and complex urban environment.

Dr Graeme Smith, senior vice president at Oxbotica and Project Endeavour Consortium director, says, “The first live on-road public trials mark a key landmark for Project Endeavour as we work with local authorities and members of the public in London, Oxford and other major UK cities to shape the future of mobility. Alongside our valued partners, we’re making autonomous vehicle services an everyday reality, right here in the UK.”

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The post Project Endeavour begins first public autonomous vehicle trials in Oxford appeared first on IoT Now Transport.

Telefonica’s ElevenPaths enhances its global IoT security capabilities with Subex

ElevenPaths, Telefonica’s cybersecurity company, has taken a further step in protecting Internet of Things (IoT) and converged environments with the signature of a global partnership agreement with Subex. This offers the IoT Threats Detection service worldwide.

The monitoring and incident response service will leverage Machine Learning and specific IoT/OT threat intelligence techniques to profile the behaviour of IoT devices and associated networks, thereby making it possible to detect and respond to anomalies or cyberattacks that may affect the different end-to-end elements in IoT (devices, communication network, or service platforms).

The service is fed by a global network of honeypots (“decoy” system designed to be the target of an attack to detect it and obtaining more information) specialised in IoT/OT. This network is distributed throughout the world in over 60 locations and covers more than 500 different system architectures, processing on average 10 million sophisticated cyberattacks every day.

Telefonica’s extensive experience in network management enables the access to traffic information that will be analysed later using Subex’s capabilities. Moreover, customers can receive all benefits of a managed service through the Telefónica operations expertise, relaying on the ElevenPaths’ SOC (Security Operations Centre), that has locations in eleven centres on the planet and is supported by experts specially trained in this technology.

IoT threat detection

This addresses several IoT challenges that ElevenPaths calls “pressing”:

  • Increased discoverability and visibility of the IoT devices that are part of the infrastructure as well as the organisations’ services, to gain an understanding of their legitimate behaviour.
  • Holistic protection of organisations, where IoT devices must be seen as an increasingly significant part of the whole infrastructure to be protected. Most of the time, these elements may be the weakest link due to their dispersion, their physical accessibility, and the inexistence or deficiency of security controls.
  • The need to have solutions capable of escalating to the dimensions required by IoT infrastructures, as well as having sources and mechanisms to generate specific cyberintelligence in this field that guarantees the effectiveness and reliability of the detection systems.

Among the many benefits of this service, being an agentless solution, releases from the need to install software on the IoT devices. Given the IoT intrinsic dimension and the limited resources associated with many of these devices, this factor constitutes a great advantage. Also, as the analysis is performed over a copy of the traffic, the solution does not impact the original traffic of the IoT service or its service level agreements (SLAs) at any time.

Alberto Sempere

“The vast majority of our customers from almost any sector we focus on have launched − or will launch in the short term − projects and initiatives where IoT technologies are the key. While the possibilities in terms of new services and efficiency improvements are huge, they also mean greater exposure to security risks that need to be properly managed. This agreement with Subex allows us to provide a best-in-class monitoring and incident response service for IoT environments,” says Alberto Sempere, product and go-to-market director at ElevenPaths.

“Our partnership with ElevenPaths is built around affording businesses a new class of enterprise security that spans environments, devices, cybersecurity strategies, and regional and global threats to deliver true cyber-resilience that is deep, robust and sustainable. We are excited by the possibilities that this alliance brings forth specifically in areas such as jointly equipping businesses to deal with the existing and emerging cyber threats with a high level of confidence and assurance,” adds Kiran Zachariah, VP digital security at Subex.

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NXP extends secure ultra-wideband portfolio with new sensing solutions

NXP Semiconductors N.V. has announced the next milestone in establishing secure ultra-wideband (UWB) technology as the global standard for fine-ranging and high-precision sensing. Following the introduction of mobile and automotive UWB solutions, NXP has expanded its portfolio to include new ultra-wideband (UWB) integrated circuits (ICs).

Unveiled at its annual developer’s conference, Trimension SR040 and SR150 ICs are optimised to enable new IoT use cases such as smart locks and real-time location system (RTLS) tags, delivering “relative position” with a very high level of accuracy. NXP Trimension is the new designated brand name for NXP’s proven UWB platform – spanning solutions designed for the specific needs of the automotive, mobile and IoT markets.

“At NXP, we’re convinced that true innovation happens at the intersection of ecosystems. To accelerate the adoption of UWB and create meaningful new experiences, smart edge devices need to gain spatial awareness, whether it’s a smartphone, car, or different IoT device form factor,” says Rafael Sotomayor and EVP of BL Connectivity & Security with NXP. “Imagine the possibilities of moving through daily life with fewer barriers as devices anticipate our actions. Our new IoT ICs, combined with NXP’s connectivity portfolio, will help developers add dimensionality to devices and objects to make this vision possible.”

UWB is enabling a world where doors lock and unlock in response to the owner’s actual presence, where cars are shared with a simple touch of a screen or accessed handsfree, where smart home automation systems follow their owners intuitively and efficiently from one room to another, and people spend less time searching because misplaced items can be tracked in an instant.

“With higher levels of accuracy in positioning capabilities along with increased data security compared to other RF technologies, UWB will significantly improve the handsfree access control user experience in places such as offices, hospitals, educational institutions, and homes,” comments Ramesh Songukrishnasamy, HID Global, SVP and CTO. “Based on its fine-ranging capability, we also believe UWB will enable many new location-based services and device-to-device IoT applications both in consumer products and industrial applications.”

Positioning and sensing optimised for IoT use cases

Designed with the specific needs of IoT devices in mind, Trimension SR150 adds angle-of-arrival (AoA) technology for an added level of precision. Trimension SR150 is ideally suited for the UWB enablement of all kinds of larger infrastructures, such as access control installations, indoor localisation setups, and payment schemes, as well as consumer electronics. Several SR150 IC devices can be placed in a room as UWB anchors to help localise people and objects as they move.

Optimised for low-power operation, Trimension SR040 is designed for use in battery-operated IoT devices, including UWB trackers and tags, and can be integrated with Bluetooth Low Energy or other connectivity controllers in one device. Trimension OL23D0 complements the range of dedicated IoT solutions as an open, fully customer programmable UWB controller for IoT applications.

Module partners and the path to production: Addressing specific use cases, Trimension SR150 and SR040 ICs are available in easy-to-integrate modules and development kits supplied by selected NXP partners.

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The post NXP extends secure ultra-wideband portfolio with new sensing solutions appeared first on IoT Now Transport.

NXP extends secure ultra-wideband portfolio with new sensing solutions

NXP Semiconductors N.V. has announced the next milestone in establishing secure ultra-wideband (UWB) technology as the global standard for fine-ranging and high-precision sensing. Following the introduction of mobile and automotive UWB solutions, NXP has expanded its portfolio to include new ultra-wideband (UWB) integrated circuits (ICs).

Unveiled at its annual developer’s conference, Trimension SR040 and SR150 ICs are optimised to enable new IoT use cases such as smart locks and real-time location system (RTLS) tags, delivering “relative position” with a very high level of accuracy. NXP Trimension is the new designated brand name for NXP’s proven UWB platform – spanning solutions designed for the specific needs of the automotive, mobile and IoT markets.

“At NXP, we’re convinced that true innovation happens at the intersection of ecosystems. To accelerate the adoption of UWB and create meaningful new experiences, smart edge devices need to gain spatial awareness, whether it’s a smartphone, car, or different IoT device form factor,” says Rafael Sotomayor and EVP of BL Connectivity & Security with NXP. “Imagine the possibilities of moving through daily life with fewer barriers as devices anticipate our actions. Our new IoT ICs, combined with NXP’s connectivity portfolio, will help developers add dimensionality to devices and objects to make this vision possible.”

UWB is enabling a world where doors lock and unlock in response to the owner’s actual presence, where cars are shared with a simple touch of a screen or accessed handsfree, where smart home automation systems follow their owners intuitively and efficiently from one room to another, and people spend less time searching because misplaced items can be tracked in an instant.

“With higher levels of accuracy in positioning capabilities along with increased data security compared to other RF technologies, UWB will significantly improve the handsfree access control user experience in places such as offices, hospitals, educational institutions, and homes,” comments Ramesh Songukrishnasamy, HID Global, SVP and CTO. “Based on its fine-ranging capability, we also believe UWB will enable many new location-based services and device-to-device IoT applications both in consumer products and industrial applications.”

Positioning and sensing optimised for IoT use cases

Designed with the specific needs of IoT devices in mind, Trimension SR150 adds angle-of-arrival (AoA) technology for an added level of precision. Trimension SR150 is ideally suited for the UWB enablement of all kinds of larger infrastructures, such as access control installations, indoor localisation setups, and payment schemes, as well as consumer electronics. Several SR150 IC devices can be placed in a room as UWB anchors to help localise people and objects as they move.

Optimised for low-power operation, Trimension SR040 is designed for use in battery-operated IoT devices, including UWB trackers and tags, and can be integrated with Bluetooth Low Energy or other connectivity controllers in one device. Trimension OL23D0 complements the range of dedicated IoT solutions as an open, fully customer programmable UWB controller for IoT applications.

Module partners and the path to production: Addressing specific use cases, Trimension SR150 and SR040 ICs are available in easy-to-integrate modules and development kits supplied by selected NXP partners.

Comment on this article below or via Twitter @IoTGN

The post NXP extends secure ultra-wideband portfolio with new sensing solutions appeared first on IoT global network.