The Smart City Virtual Startup project was a multi-department project in the University of Turku. The project was held in collaboration with Teleste Oyj and Turku City to develop a new and innovative smart city solution. Teleste expertise in communication and surveillance technology was utilized to create the pilot system. City of Turku helped with facilitation and contacts. Our project timeline can be roughly split in to two parts. First half of the project we brainstormed different project ideas, investigated the business potential in them, and validated them with Teleste and City of Turku. The process was lengthy and depended heavily on our project owners. When we finally had the initial idea to carry forward, we started to build detailed business plans and pilot implementation options.

Vision

The final collaborated idea was to create a real time people flow measurement system to help with city infrastructure planning and to maximize all businesses’ revenue. The system measures people flow with automatic camera networks and provides a web-based service to different kind of businesses (restaurants, shopping malls, advertisement companies), where they can see the analyzed people flow data. People flow measurement can be used for city planning, property pricing and advertisement placement or to decide, if it's a busy day in a restaurant or not.

Pilot

With the help of City of Turku and Teleste we were able a pilot system in Kauppahalli. The system consisted of four simple dome surveillance cameras and a recorder. We were able to cover one half of Kauppahalli with the setup. The recorded data was analyzed with Teleste’s video analyzing software. With the camera analyzes and the initial vision, we built a proof-of-concept video in collaboration with Nopia (animation and VFX studio in Pori).