An adequate living environment also requires cleanliness. Cities used to be regarded as dirty, but a lot has changed in this respect, at least in Europe. How can this be ensured in the future? What would we need? Small, efficient machines that are capable of performing various tasks and that operate autonomously and autodidactically will be most effective. Whether or not these operate as a swarm is not so important.
It is important to link individual process steps at the lowest level in order to make much better use of limited resources, as can be illustrated by the example of a traffic island: the island can be mown by a robot, a kind of automatic “goat”; our goat can use the biomass to generate energy, and simultaneously vacuum the fine dust or, thinking further into the future, perhaps even utilise it.
Have we come far enough now for developments to be within reach?
Today we have all of the elements we need for autonomous, networked systems: camera perception is now extremely good, innovations from the automotive industry in the field of autonomous driving are useful for us, storage technology and battery technology are being developed further, as is sensor technology and the processing of data in the field of smart data. All of these parallel developments in different areas are creating synergy effects that can be used to enormous benefit.
With these networked, autonomous systems, are we now moving into the field of Artificial Intelligence?
We talk about the moment of technological singularity, which has not yet been reached: the evolutionary stage at which the smartest person invents a machine that is smarter than humans. Because at that moment, the machine will be able to invent its own machines, and we will no longer, or only partially, be in control of the development. This was widely discussed when Big Blue won against the world chess champion. However, that was simple mathematics. Much more interesting is the fact that at the beginning of this year, a machine beat the world champion in Go – with a unique kind of creativity, and with moves that are not mathematically calculable. In this respect, it remains to be seen when we will have genuine AI.
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It is important to link individual process steps at the lowest level in order to make much better use of limited resources.
Dr Alexander Rieck
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e-Mobility
Dieter Lindauer, Chairman of Bundesverband Smart City e.V. and Manager of Stadtwerke Rodgau (Rodgau municipal utilities), about the interdisciplinary requirements of cities.
Smart City is a big concept. What opportunities and challenges do you associate with it?
We are dealing primarily with interdisciplinary issues. In Germany, we still have some work to do on that front, because in the relevant fields we are set up more according to discipline.
What fields are worth connecting?
We see four key fields. First of all, the energy sector. As a result of decentralisation, consumers are now becoming prosumers, i.e. consumers that are also producers.
What does that mean, what do intelligent networks look like, what business models do we need in the future?
The second field, mobility, is also changing. While local public transport is contending with cost optimisation and frequencies, e-mobility, for example, is on the way to getting a share of 5 – 10. The importance of mini vehicles will increase, as will car sharing in combination with autonomous driving. The third field is communication, in this context namely the transfer of the consumer world into the urban world. As with Androids, etc., we need a communication platform for the city, the Internet of Infrastructures. The fourth and final field is urban planning.
Do you have any real-life examples of this?
A very nice pilot project was carried out by a large automotive manufacturer and a parcel service. The vehicles communicated via GPS positioning where they were at the time the parcel was delivered. During the day, for most people that is at work, so in a company several hundred parcels can be delivered at once using this function. The recipient could even open his car boot via smartphone if he wanted. The result: we save time and, of course, fuel, because only one address needs to be stopped at.
Smart networking and use of information therefore result in new business models.
Are there also opportunities in more “down-to-earth” areas like city cleaning?
Fresh thinking, starting unusual cooperations – all of this is for me part of the Smart City, and that in turn covers all areas. When it comes to city cleaning, time used and productivity are what count. Semi-autonomous sweepers are absolutely conceivable for achieving better results. The subject of e-mobility can also be discussed, although range may still be an issue here. Cleaning on demand is also an interesting concept. The subject of metabolism, i.e. the issue of what to do with collected refuse, is particularly interesting to me. In 2015, a British company discovered an interesting approach. Street waste is filtered in a pilot facility in order to extract rare metals like palladium, rhodium and platinum. According to their own data, this generates 5kg per 50,000 tonnes of waste – a worthwhile model for the future if the prices of these commodities continue to rise.
