Dr. Franklin Tong, CEO of ASTRI (2nd from right); Alex Arena, Group Managing Director of HKT (2nd from left); Veni Shone, President of TDD Product Line and Acting President of Cellular V2X Solutions, Huawei Technologies (left); and Mantosh Malhotra, senior director, business development, Qualcomm Technologies (right); jointly announce the establishment of the Smart Mobility Consortium.
The Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI), operator HKT and vendors Huawei and Qualcomm have formed a consortium aiming to build a smart mobility system for Hong Kong using cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technologies.
The consortium aims to revolutionize Hong Kong's transportation sector using C-V2X, a standard covering both network-based and direct communications for vehicles.
A C-V2X powered smart mobility system will therefore enable vehicles to connect to both the cloud and each other, as well as to pedestrians and to traffic infrastructure.
Vehicles can use the “co-operative awareness” this enables to improve mobility safety as well as autonomous driving, and can help law enforcement and traffic and urban planners to plan and monitor the safety and efficiency of traffic movements.
The consortium aims to use C-V2X to introduce intelligent transport services including a warning mechanism for collision and control, assistance for cruise control and parking, and alert systems for speed and lane violations.
It plans to work with government, the automobile industry and other stakeholders to realize this vision. The project is also expected to generate opportunities for other sectors including shipment, ridesharing, home-delivery, insurance, infotainment and mobile healthcare.
“Hong Kong is a well-connected city with good infrastructure. If we complement these strengths with the latest innovation in science and technology, Hong Kong can become one of the most sophisticated and advanced smart cities in the world,” ASTRI chairman Wong Min-yam commented.
“This Smart Mobility Consortium is a giant step in that leap. ASTRI is developing state-of-the-art applications, platforms and prototypes which can benefit not just Hong Kong, but potentially other cities in this region too. We, as the SAR’s largest technological R&D institution, are partnering with three eminent organisations to bring revolutionary changes to the way we manage our city’s traffic.”
The consortium plans to carry out C-V2X pilot in the second quarter of this year. "Our trial sites will likely be at Hong Kong Science Park and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. We hope to extend the pilot to East Kowloon at a later stage," said Peter Lam, managing director for engineering at HKT.
"For C-V2X implementation, dedicated spectrum in 5.9GHz is needed. We will try to seek a spectrum testing license from the government to do the pilot," he added.