THE AREA 52 OF SMART TECHNOLOGY!

If you know what Area 52 is, or if you have just googled it, you know it is an underground laboratory of sorts that monitors and researches extremely innovative high- tech, even alien activities. There’s a mini Area 52 of sorts, in India — the Honeywell Technology Solutions ( HTS) in Bengaluru.

Imagine a flight coming into an airport in the Middle East. Right after landing, the cockpit screen displays a moving map guiding the aircraft through a maze of parking bays, parked aircraft and routes to reach the closest gate, in the shortest possible time. Now imagine all of this is done remotely from the HTS office. There are multiple coordinates to be monitored: real- time air traffic over the airport, number of aircraft scheduled for take- off and landing and the route paths they have been allocated, priority aircraft, among others. This is just one of many technologies that Honeywell has created and manages out of India. Teams at the Bengaluru HTS also manage surveillance of upcoming ‘ smart cities’ like Aurangabad, Rajkot and Bhubaneshwar, including security cameras for traffic and street lighting.

To cash in on the sudden surge of e- commerce in India, Honeywell has introduced a connected freight solution that aims to reduce losses and waste of commodities in transit. Each commodity will have a sensor tag that measures temperature, shock, tilt, humidity etc and keeps pinging the sender and or the receiver.