Smart Citizens driving the development of Smart Cities: the latest Smart City technologies on display at Innorobo 2015

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Discover them at Innorobo 2015, from 1 to 3 July at Lyon’s Cité Internationale.

Lyon, France, April 13, 2015 -- Over 200 companies representing the full range of robotics applications (industrial robotics and personal & professional service robotics) will be showing off their know-how at this year’s edition of the Innorobo exhibition. Among these applications, technologies and innovations that meet the challenges faced by smart cities and underpin the projects headed by various institutions will be on display at the 3-day event. A list of this year’s exhibitors can be found at http://innorobo.com/2015-exhibitors/.

Everyone is talking about the city of the future: in 2050, urban populations will account for 70% of the world’s overall population, up from 50% today. Frost & Sullivan predict that the Smart Cities market will be worth $ 3.3 trillion in 2025.

With this massive urbanization and the exponential progress of universal technologies, what will the smart city look like? The three “standard” pillars of the Smart City are environmental sustainability, economic viability and the well being of city dwellers. Such a vision incorporates the energy, transport, water, waste, safety, healthcare and education sectors, among others. Today, initiatives are being rolled out all over the world. Asia is home to large-scale projects like the Songdo district in South Korea and Singapore’s Smart Nation, which target leaders in the IT, energy and telecoms sectors to implement a broad range of new concepts. At the same time, Europe is planning to make its existing cities “smart” through new technologies and infrastructures.

“We believe in open innovation and a collaborative approach, and we staunchly defend entrepreneurship. This is why large-scale institutional projects and solutions offered by international groups have to be driven by the ideas and disruptive innovations that entrepreneurs bring,” says Catherine Simon, founder and CEO of Innorobo. “At Innorobo, innovation directors from major groups, institutional players and even citizens like you and me at the general public session can share their vision for the city of the future, as well as discover and explore the technologies that will make them possible.” At Innorobo 2015, both exhibitors and speakers will show us how to give meaning to a Smart City approach and make it something more than just a simple technological showcase or large-scale project. We must always remember that there can be no Smart Cities without Smart Citizens.

The exhibitors at Innorobo 2015 and the conferences dealing with this topic are listed at the event site, http://innorobo.com/2015-exhibitors/, in the Smart Cities tab.

The plenary conference dedicated to Smart Cities will be held Thursday 2 July from 2:00 to 4:00 pm with a panel of renowned speakers on the subject:

	Carlo Ratti - *Director - MIT SENSEable City Lab* SENSEABLE CITIES The increasing deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics in recent years is allowing a new approach to the study of the built environment. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed - alongside the tools we use to design them and impact on their physical structure. The contribution from Prof. Carlo Ratti will address these issues from a critical point of view through projects by the Senseable City Laboratory, a research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the design office Carlo Ratti Associati.
	Marcelo Ang - *Associate Professor - National University of Singapore (NUS)* Sustainable Transportation using Robotic Vehicles for Mobility-on-Demand Easy mobility is an important capability to enhance the quality of all our lives. Self-driving cars provide mobility-on-demand anytime and anywhere. Besides the convenience, autonomous driving provides a safe and productive environment, and an efficient use of resources. This talk shares our research group’s current activities in achieving mobility-on-demand using autonomous vehicles, in both pedestrian (malls, airports, parks, etc.) and road environments. The current state-of-the-art will be presented together with current challenges and our approach to solving these challenges.
	Blake McEldowney - *Founding Partner, ZINC* Designing Citizen-Centric Robots for the Urban Environment As robotics becomes increasingly woven into the fabric of our lives, we see a need for robots to be designed in a much more human-centered way. Robots should only be developed if there is a defined need that solves a human problem, directly or indirectly. Interactions with robots need to be clearly thought through and the larger effect on society at large must be taken into account. With that in mind, we will explore how robotics and AI can be designed and implemented to improve the urban environment. As technology becomes ubiquitous within city infrastructure, we envision ways to leverage technologies like robotics to create citizen-centric cities. Ultimately, we want to improve the lives of humans and we see ways that new types of carefully designed robots can help us in this regard.
	Tuomas J. Lukka - *Chief Scientist - ZenRobotics* Smart robots change the economics of recycling The ZenRobotics Recycler is a waste-sorting product using robots to recycle waste from a conveyor belt. I discuss some of the technical challenges in creating a robotic system that can operate in such an unstructured environment. On the business and waste processing side, a versatile system such as ours has implications for the big picture: smaller, cheaper, more local recycling plants reduce logistical costs.

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About Innorobo

Innorobo, Europe’s leading event dedicated entirely to the robotics sector and its innovations, has created a unique ecosystem to speed up the emergence of technologies that provide solutions for the major challenges our world is facing. Innorobo brings together established robotics companies from around the world, as well as research laboratories, start-ups, inventors, institutional players, strategy and innovation decision makers from major international groups, SMEs and the media. www.innorobo.com

About Innoecho

An Impact Consulting firm focused on business development through innovation and expertise in worldwide robotics markets, Innoecho brings together a vast business ecosystem of disruptive technologies in order to make the world a better place. Throughout the year, Innoecho drives a community of over 3,500 robotics companies worldwide with nearly 10,000 leaders and decision makers who work together through open innovation and see robotics technologies, products and services as opportunities for technology-fueled growth and competitive advantages. www.innoecho.com