Mouser Electronics and celebrity engineer Grant Imahara have released a new video for Mouser’s award-winning Empowering Innovation Together program. In “The Shaping Smarter Cities” series video, Imahara travels to Porto, Portugal, to investigate how innovators are using technology to help with infrastructure problems caused by rapid urban expansion - specifically massive traffic congestion. The new series is supported by Analog Devices, Intel, Microchip Technology and Molex.
With residents in Porto spending an average of 120 hours a year in traffic, both corporate productivity and the environment have been under assault for decades. Grant Imahara speaks with engineers from Veniam, a Porto-based technology company that has developed a potential solution to stagnant traffic. By implementing large Wi-Fi mesh networks in cities across the world, which uses vehicles as roving hotspots, Veniam can gather large quantities of usable data for better traffic management and municipal planning. The networks further benefit citizens by enabling publicly available Wi-Fi connections throughout the city.
Imahara also interviews João Barros, founder and CEO of Veniam, to provide additional details on the hardware and software used to turn moving vehicles into Wi-Fi hotspots. The CEO has explained how the collected data can be used to alleviate street congestion, assist with fleet management, help self-driving cars, and improve efficiency for commercial delivery industries — all to provide better infrastructure for smarter cities.
Since 2015, the Empowering Innovation Together program has been one of the most visible and recognized marketing programs in the electronic component industry, featuring projects ranging from bringing superhero technology to life to 3D printing a semi-autonomous car with drone technology.
For 2017, Mouser’s goal is to reach even more innovators around the globe with the Empowering Innovation Together program and solve problems that impact more of humanity.
Click here to learn more about Mouser’s Empowering Innovation Together series.
