Fujitsu Fuels Big Data Innovation in Mobility Space with Launch of "Digital Twin Collector" Platform

Apr 15, 2021 10:44 JST

Source: Fujitsu Ltd

TOKYO, Apr 15, 2021 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu today announced the launch of a new integrated virtual platform for the mobility space, which allows users to seamlessly integrate and manage information on devices including connected cars, smartphones, and tablets. Fujitsu will offer the new platform, the "Fujitsu Future Mobility Accelerator Digital Twin Collector," to automobile manufacturers and insurance companies in the Japanese market from April 22, with availability to follow in North America and Europe from June 2021, contributing to the realization of new mobility services on a global scale.

As a wide-area distributed data access technology optimized for mobility, the Digital Twin Collector delivers stable communications by regulating the volume of data sent from the mobility device to the cloud with the Traffic Scheduler Function, while the Data Coverage Control Function enables comprehensive data collection without duplication. These functions make it possible to reproduce and process large volumes of data from mobility devices on the cloud platform as needed, significantly reducing costs for the management and transmission of large amounts of vehicle and traffic data.

With the development of this platform, Fujitsu demonstrates its ongoing contributions to the realization of automated driving systems, including the creation of high-precision maps used by automobile manufacturers, etc., as well as offering detailed data on driving conditions including congestion, obstacles, and weather to vehicles on the road by road management companies.

Background

In recent years, the world has faced growing demand for innovative solutions to the challenges posed by exponential increases in data generated by connected vehicles and the digital transformation of transportation through new mobility technologies. To address this, Fujitsu has developed and launched its stream data processing platform, "Digital Twin Utilizer," as well as an in-vehicle camera image analysis platform, "Digital Twin Analyzer."
The introduction of Fujitsu's new "Digital Twin Collector", which greatly reduces the cost of data collection and storage by virtually integrating and managing the data held by mobility devices, represents the latest development in this ongoing effort to streamline the use of big data with digital twin technology.

Digital Twin Collector Overview

1. Distributed management of data held by mobility devices reduces data collection and storage costs
The platform virtually integrates distributed data by managing only lightweight metadata (1), rather than storing large amounts of data such as video recorded by mobility devices in the cloud. This allows users, including car manufacturers and insurance companies, to access only the data they need, significantly reducing the amount of data and traffic in the cloud, delivering cost savings of 50% (2).

2. Traffic Scheduler Function provides stable data access by regulating congestion of large-volume data communications.
When it is necessary to collect video data simultaneously from one's own vehicle and surrounding vehicles due to an accident, etc., the burden on the cloud side increases rapidly and congestion occurs as data is accessed and copied from each device. This may disrupt the flow of data or reduce data accessibility. The new Traffic Scheduler Function regulates bulk traffic by controlling data replication requests from mobility devices. This provides stable data access.

3. Data Coverage Control Function delivers consistent service quality by keeping data duplication under control and performing comprehensive replication
Biases introduced at the time training data is collected for self-driving systems may impact service quality. The Data Coverage Control function performs a cross-sectional analysis of the data access and acquisition status for a large number of mobility devices, thereby contributing both to the prevention of duplication of similar data, such as video data with the same time, location, and viewing angle, and the completeness of the acquired data. This helps to ensure service quality for the data being used for analysis as well as the service itself.

Use Case

- Improving the efficiency and sophistication of insurance operations
When an accident is detected, simply by specifying the location and time of the accident, a video from before and after the accident can be automatically obtained for the vehicle and surrounding vehicles. This allows insurance companies to provide automotive insurance service that handles accidents in a way that takes into account multiple perspectives.

- Upgrading road management services
Based on vehicle behavior, the system can capture images in real time related to traffic congestion, accidents, falling obstacles, bad weather, and other events occurring on the road, enabling the road management company to provide detailed traffic control services in a timely manner.

- Vehicle failure analysis
By collecting peripheral images when abnormal values are detected by vehicle sensors, automobile manufacturers can use them to estimate the cause of failure and provide feedback for vehicle development.

Service Overview

In addition to the basic service that virtually integrates and manages data distributed on mobility devices, Fujitsu will offer several types of services, including a requirement definition support service that organizes requirements according to customer needs, setup service that creates usage environments, support service and customization service at individual quotation basis.

(1) Metadata:
Additional information related to the data, including basic information such as who created the data, where it was created, when it was created, how to access the data, and information describing the contents of the data.
(2) delivering cost savings of 50%:
Comparison with the case where all data is aggregated and accumulated on a cloud platform.

About Fujitsu

Fujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company offering a full range of technology products, solutions and services. Approximately 130,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 3.9 trillion yen (US$35 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2020. For more information, please see www.fujitsu.com.

Source: Fujitsu Ltd
Sectors: Enterprise IT