A key part of Sony Mobile’s strategy is not just looking at ways we can improve our core Xperia smartphone, tablet and SmartWear business, but also how we develop emergent technologies with a particular focus on the Internet of Things (IoT) sector, co-creation opportunities and new ways of working to help transform our business.
Over the past few months we’ve established a dedicated sales office in the United States to bring niche and emergent technologies from within the Sony group to market , started building a dedicated research and incubation division in Lund to develop “beyond smartphone” technologies and piloted Sony’s first Concept for Android beta which allowed Swedish users to test and shape their Xperia Android experience – we’ll be sharing updates on each of those over the coming weeks.
More recently we’ve applied our innovation and technological expertise to the world of industry to offer practical business solutions using advanced Sony technology – establishing “Aerosense”, a joint venture with robotics company ZMP.
Aerosense will leverage Sony and Sony Mobile’s camera, sensing, telecommunications network, and robotics technologies together with ZMP’s automated driving and robotics expertise, to provide a new offering for enterprise customers.
Aerosense will provide enterprise solutions to a broad industry spectrum including (but not limited to): construction, logistics, agriculture, forestry and fishery. The company will also platformise an end-to-end workflow featuring an operational support cycle, with automated UAVs that take measurements and real-time monitoring and subsequent analysis of data uploaded to the cloud.
We believe it to be an exciting and powerful vision of how technology can automate a number of traditionally human industrial processes, such as measurement, surveying, observation and inspection.
Last month Aerosense had its official unveiling at a press event in Tokyo, showcasing a new in-development prototype – a multicopter UAV. It’s unique in the way it aims to combine Sony’s highly sensitive, advanced image sensors and SmartAR integrated augmented reality technology with ZMP’s automated driving and environment recognition.
The new model will allow Aerosense to achieve autonomous UAV flight, which up to this point has been impossible without relying on GPS. It sits alongside Aerosense’s experimental UAV that boasts vertical takeoff and faster flight for longer time, an advancement which holds real potential for the future of business.
Stay tuned for more on Aerosense and our other innovation projects over the coming weeks.
