Japan’s Softbank will plough artificial intelligence (AI) and internet-of-things (IoT) technologies into a burgeoning smart city project in Indonesia, after striking a deal with Jakarta-based conglomerate Lippo Group.
The deal, with the Indonesian firm’s real-estate division PT Lippo Karawaci (LPKR), focuses on Lippo Village in Tangerang, a new town west of Jakarta. It envisions a ‘smart cluster’ and ‘smart traffic management’, bringing together sensor and analytics solutions around real estate, healthcare, and mobility.
Lippo Village, previously a swamp area, opened in 1993 as a new urban centre for innovation and development. It is the centre of many of Indonesia’s smart-city initiatives. The government has earmarked the town, with a population of less than 100,000, as a “central hub of technology application and research in South East Asia”.
The project plans for advanced camera technologies for facial recognition of occupants in vehicles, for reading license plates, including to distinguish residents and visitors, and for counting the number of vehicles entering town, including to distinguish vehicle types. The data will be crunched to improve traffic management and flow.
SoftBank will deliver an analytics platform, which will cross over into the real-estate sector. LPKR is the largest retail mall owner and operator in the region, with 51 venues in 36 cities. Consumer “behaviour” in shopping malls will be “linked with” special offers and rewards, said LPKR.
The project also covers Siloam Hospitals, a chain of healthcare facilities in Indonesia, also owned by the Lippo Group.
John Riady, director of the Group, said: “We are excited to move forward and collaborate with SoftBank to develop AI and IoT-based innovative solutions for our customers across the largest integrated real estate and healthcare company in Indonesia.”
Hidebumi Kitahara, vice president and head of global business strategy at Softbank, said: “SoftBank will utilize its technology deployment insights to introduce advanced technologies to shopping malls and other commercial facilities, hospitals, and the entire Lippo Village area. Through this, we aim to develop Lippo Village as a smart city model [for] South East Asia.”
