As we move closer to a driverless future, whether that is in a fleet scenario, an industrial setting, or individual passenger cars, a new kind of infrastructure is required to ensure the security, safety and performance of all these autonomous vehicles and the people interacting with them.
Veniam builds a platform that turn any car, bus, or truck into part of an expanding and resilient wireless network that moves massive amounts of data between vehicles and the cloud. Veniam is building and deploying today what they call the Internet of Moving Things. It is a part of the wireless infrastructure that will be required everywhere in the future. In 2016, Veniam was named as one of the 50 most disruptive companies in the world by CNBC, and received an award from TU Automotive Best Auto Mobility Product/Service.
In addition to the standard challenges IoT is facing like ofsecurity, privacy, and reliableconnectivity, Veniam’s team is also dealing with moving objects.As the number of IoT devices is growing by high order of magnitude, which also includes more and more vehicles (piloted today, driverless in the future). Current mobile networks are simply not designed to handle steel cages on wheels moving quickly, consuming and generating terabytes of data.An autonomous driving future depends on that data moving back and forth reliably between vehicles and the cloud, not just for the passengers sitting inside, but also for the vehicles themselves to operate.
Designer of Veniam
Joao Barros is one of the Founders & CEO of Veniam. Barros has been focused on making truly connected cars a reality since completing his Ph.D. in 2004, and more recently as a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Porto, Portugal. He founded Veniam in 2012, to bring those ideas to the marketplace with the mission of making not just smarter vehicles, but smarter streets, neighborhoods, and cities. Barros believes that the key is building networks that can generate and analyze the right data to make better decisions about development, design, and efficiency.
Solutions and Services
Veniam builds a platform that delivers a wireless mesh network that turns any vehicle (or fixed piece of infrastructure) into a node on that network. The Veniam network is designed to move massive amounts of data both to and from vehicles. For passengers on a bus, that means enjoying high quality internet browsing, and video watching. For fleet operators, data is collected and sent, that monitors vehicles and the environment around them to provide better insight into operations or trigger specific events – maybe call for a mechanic, unload a full trash bin, or reroute a bus.
Innovative-Robust Service
Veniam clients include passenger bus fleet owners, car manufacturers and OEMs of industrial vehicles and machines. The latter includes fleet owners that send out trucks for installation, maintenance, and delivery. Veniam customers also include cities and port authorities operating their own equipment. What makes the networks themselves unique – robust, resilient, not dependent on anyone “flavor” of wireless technology – makes the outcomes unique. Because, Veniam’s networks can generate and move more data, in places like Singapore, Mexico City, and New York City. Veniam customers are now getting insights that can help them better design not just their business and government operations, but the cities of the future.
Veniam is recognized internationally by the high-tech and automotive industry for its innovativeness and disruptive solutions.
Benefits For Customers
For the public or private buses, the Veniam solution not only offer high quality connectivity onboard – a better experience for passenger – but opens up new revenue opportunities for in-vehicle and on-vehicle advertising tailored to location, time, and day.
At the same time, Veniam’s network collects and moves the data that can help fleet operators reduce costs by running routes more efficiently, safely, and flagging any unusual events, whether that is identifying a bad driver or a passenger in need of help.
Future Prospect and Scenario
Team Veniam thinks that the vast majority of children born this year – 2017 – will never learn to drive. If that is true, 16 or so years down the road, one of the key components of IoT in the future – the car – will need to be completely redesigned. For that they are preparing for it by anticipating the needs of the infrastructure that will be required in that driverless future.
More innovation and more deployments of Veniam mesh networks are seen around the world. They are already in places in Europe, Asia, and North America, and what those networks enable is an acceleration of what they, and their customers, are learning, because the bigger these networks get the more robust they become. You can expect that flywheel – combining networks, data and insight – to spin faster.