Innovative traffic solutions help shape smarter cities

Mouser, along with celebrity engineer Grant Imahara, has released a new video for the Shaping Smarter Cities series, part of Mouser’s Empowering Innovation Together program. In the newest video, Imahara travels to Porto, Portugal, to investigate how innovators are using technology to help with infrastructure problems caused by rapid urban expansion — specifically massive traffic congestion. The new series is supported by the company’s valued suppliers Analog Devices, Intel, Microchip Technology and Molex. With residents in Porto spending an average of 120 hours a year in traffic, both corporate productivity and the environment have been under assault for decades. Imahara speaks with engineers from Veniam, a Porto-based technology company that has developed a potential solution to stagnant traffic. By implementing large Wi-Fi mesh networks in cities across the world, which use vehicles as roving hotspots, Veniam can gather large quantities of usable data for better traffic management and municipal planning. The networks further benefit citizens by enabling publicly available Wi-Fi connections throughout the city. “While technology will be the means to create smarter cities, innovators will be the catalysts who actually make it happen,” said Glenn Smith, president and CEO of Mouser Electronics. “What we are witnessing in this new video series are some of the world’s best engineers and innovators at the very start of a movement that will make life easier for future generations.” “Walking the streets of Porto and speaking with the top engineers at Veniam, I am struck by the passion that they bring to the world with their designs,” said Imahara. “In partnerships between companies like Veniam and Mouser, we can easily see how innovation will create more connected cities.”