The city of Aveiro hosted the initiative "Techdays 2021 – Building our Future", in the week of October 11-17, with several actions and events that fusion technology, art, and culture. Techdays 2021 was organized by the Municipality of Aveiro together with several partners, including the Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) and the University of Aveiro.
IT was represented in several activities. At the exhibition area of the Manuel Firmino Market, the 5G-MOBIX Project (5G for cooperative & connected automated MOBIility on X-border corridors) demonstrated how 5G communications enable autonomous driving; also, by using the classic game of 'where is the ball?', Do'A Beam System project demonstrated to the user the concept of "direction of arrival" (DoA) and beamforming. By Altice Labs it was presented the Digital Urban Platform of the Aveiro STEAM City project, as the centerpiece for the collection and aggregation of information from the entire ecosystem and as a catalyst for innovation and the development of knowledge-based products and services.
On the spot was the Aveiro Tech City Living Lab. IT, in collaboration with its partners of the European Project Aveiro Steam City, presented the Aveiro Tech City Living Lab, the first living lab created in Portugal, where innovative solutions in the areas of IoT and Smart Cities were tested and developed. In this workshop, the infrastructure, and services available in a living lab were presented, as well as some of the use cases already carried out with national and international entities.
Susana Sargento, IT researcher and leader of the Aveiro STEAM City project, states the innovation of “Aveiro Tech City Living Lab”: “By now, we have finalized the fiber infrastructure and 44 sets of multi-technology communication and sensing equipment in the city. We tested many different use cases, especially in the mobility domain; we are currently able to monitor boats, cars, buses, motorcycles, bikes, and people through their communication, and through mobility sensors, such as radars, lidars, and video cameras, 24h/7days. We have also developed a powerful communication infrastructure that is able to alert the vehicles about different kinds of dangers, such as vulnerable road users; cameras capture data that feed an AI software, able to give back information about what is happening in the area, and alert the vehicles, towards more autonomy on the driving. Another domain of experimentation is dedicated to emergency vehicles to optimize their routes and their automatic awareness of other vehicles. Everything is now tested in an experimental environment."
Photo credits: Aveiro Tech City