Google, LG drive smart city projects
GOOGLE and LG Electronics are working toget her to develop and prov ide hardware and soft ware technologies to upcoming smart cit y development projects t hat uti lise information and communication technologies to increase t he efficiency of urban ser v ices.
The US tech giant announced t he partnership and its details at t he first Google Cloud Summit in Seoul on Thursday. The two firms plan to work with real estate developers and investors to build smart towns powered by artificia l intelligence, t he internet of t hings and big data analy tics.
Smart city solution
“Google and LG will be providing solutions that contribute to the ‘smartness’ portion of new buildings and structures [built as part of smart towns],” Rhee In-jong, vice-president of Internet of Things (IoT) and entrepreneur-in-residence at Google, said during the summit’s press conference.
For instance, t he env isioned smart cit y solutions would monitor air qual- it y, lighting and temperature levels, and based on the data gathered recommend t he most cost-ef ficient energ y consumption model. Such complex procedures would run smoothly on one platform, he said.
As smart city solution partners, LG Electronics would take charge of building the IoT-compatible devices, while Google would provide backend technology capabilities such as cloud, AI and machine learning needed to store, process and analyse data generated by connected objects.
The smart towns envisioned by Google and LG include housing clusters, offices, commercial towns, hotels and business complexes planned by real estate developers and investors, said Rhee.
The Google executive did not point to any specific smart cit y projects or potentia l sites under consideration, say ing the t wo firms are still in t he process of developing various technologies for now.
“As we continue our [smart cit y] technolog y development, we will have to caref ully consider which sites we want to prov ide our products to,” Rhee said.
Looking ahead, the US tech giant is open to new partnerships with smart cit yrelated businesses i n Korea and abroad, said the executive, when asked whether the company was considering partnerships wit h loca l companies other than LG in Korea in t he f uture.
The Google Cloud Summit is a reg ular conference held by Google to share the latest updates and news regarding Google’s cloud computing technologies with clients. It was organized i n Korea for t he first time t his year, sig nalling t he importance of the Korean market for Google’s cloud business, said Rhee.
Rhee is a lso the former chief technolog y officer at Samsung Electronics, which competes with LG Electronics in various tech arenas including smart home dev ices. He was recruited by Google’s cloud computing business unit in Februar y, and is based at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.