Samsung and Telensa are to collaborate on smart city projects around streetlighting and data governance, with work slated in South Korea, followed by wider deployments across Asia Pacific and in the United States. The pair will also bring Samsung’s knowhow in 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain to its smart city works, it said.
Samsung SDS, the digital arm of Samsung, has signed up to UK firm Telensa’s Urban Data Project, a cloud offering that promises stringent data access and sharing controls, enabling cities to establish a “trust infrastructure” around their data usage, which seeks to keep faith with citizens.
The Urban Data Project initiative launched in Cambridge, in the UK, in February, brings together Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Smart Cambridge. Earlier this month, Belfast-based digital services provider Kainos was announced as lead partner for the ramp-up and rollout of the project to additional smart cities.
The latest deal with Samsung will see the Korean outfit’s AI-powered Brightics IoT platform, built for big data collection and analysis, integrated with Telensa’s City Data Guardian, the system at the heart of its Urban Data Project, billed as a “secure-by-design trust platform” that allows cities to apply privacy policies, ensure regulatory compliance, and make data available to improve services.
Telensa’s PLANet lighting control application will also be combined with Samsung’s Brightics IoT platform as it deploys smart street-lighting in cities in Asia Pacific and the United States. Telensa said cities will be able to access a vast ecosystem of sensor applications.
Telensa said it will also leverage Samsung’s expertise in blockchain.
Samsung SDS has its own enterprise blockchain platform, Nexledger, able to combine various customised features on Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum, the most commonly used open source platforms in the blockchain market. It also offers its own distributed consensus technology, Nexledger Consensus Algorithm (NCA), for enterprises to choose the most suitable technology.
Samsung SDS has deployed Nexledger in various industries, and defined use cases for co-verification system for banks, maritime logistics, export customs services, the product design and manufacturing process information management of manufacturers, and smart contracts.
At IBM Think 2019 in February, it unveiled Nexledger Accelerator, which can be deployed in all Hyperledger Fabric-based blockchain solutions without modifying existing blockchain source codes. It claims Nexledger Accelerator improves transaction speeds 10-fold.
Sean Im, senior vice president of Samsung SDS’ solution business division, commented: “By combining the capabilities of both companies, Samsung SDS plans to further explore new possibilities to adopt the latest information technologies including AI and blockchain.”
Telensa said urban data has been limited by two barriers, until now: trust about how cities apply best-practice privacy policies and provide transparency to citizens, and the cost of single-purpose sensors and moving raw data to the cloud. The Urban Data Project aims to solve these problems, it said, by enabling cities tighter control over data access and usage, opening new revenue streams for its transparent and productive usage.
Telensa’s ‘multi-sensor pods’, installed as edge compute and analytics units on street lights as part of the project, will run on Qualcomm’s SDM845 processors and “provide a more complete picture”, it said in February.
Will Franks, chief executive at Telensa, said: “We’ve been working with cities around the globe to make millions of streetlights smart, and now we’re providing chief data officers with the tools to protect and use urban data and engage with new technologies like 5G mobile. Samsung SDS brings global reach, product innovation and deep expertise from IoT to 5G.”
