Enterprise application software company
SAP and
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) have expanded their partnership for a co-innovation project. This partnership will develop a solution combining a connected transportation safety solution from SAP that collects and analyzes vehicle-related data with NTT’s hitoe, a sensing fabric jointly developed with
Toray Industries, and the NTT Internet of Things (IoT) analytics platform. Hitoe transmits drivers’ biological data including heart rate and mental fatigue estimates. The project aims to provide more accurate and real-time information about vehicles and drivers’ conditions.
In cooperation with
Keifuku Bus (based in Fukui, Japan), SAP and NTT have proposed to conduct a field trial starting October 2016 and the goal of providing service by January 2017. The companies will roll out this solution in the US and Europe.
What is hitoe
According to NTT, hitoe is a functional material capable of measuring biomedical signals to obtain, for example, a person’s electrocardiogram or electromyogram. This material was developed by applying NTT-developed conductive fiber technology, in which fiber material is coated with a conductive polymer to the cutting-edge nanofiber material developed by Toray Industries.
Robert Enslin, Member, Executive Board, SAP SE and President, Global Customer Operations, SAP said, “We are honored to partner with NTT Group, which runs the world’s biggest data centers. This partnership gives SAP a significant ability to broaden customers’ choices for facilitating digital transformation. The integration of NTT’s cutting-edge technologies and SAP’s revolutionary solutions will generate momentum to elevate the overall market to the next level.”
According to SAP, the co-innovation project started in Palo Alto, California, and has been led by both NTT Labs and SAP Labs China. SAP and NTT Group plan to extend the collaboration in other areas with new technologies and through global marketing promotion.
SAP states that both companies will be accelerating their cooperation in private managed cloud solutions, such as the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service, using NTT’s global data center network.
Jun Sawada, Senior Executive Vice President, NTT said, “NTT wants to contribute to business transformation for its enterprise customers by providing quality, value-added services with partners. A global partnership with SAP is a significant step to strengthen our competitive edge. This partnership will help NTT enhance capabilities to support our global clients, and can accelerate digital transformation of industries.”
hitoe in action
In February, earlier this year, NTT
announced that it has used hitoe for the INDYCAR Racing in 2015 to monitor driver and vehicle analytics. As the driver wore the hitoe the Electrocardiogram (ECG) and heart rate data were filtered to eliminate vehicle vibration, myoelectric activity and certain types of noise. Electromyogram (EMG) shows that drivers exert a great deal of energy to counteract extremely large G-forces, ranging between 3 and 5 Gs, while racing at high speeds. The results showed that the driver’s heart rate spiked sharply at the beginning of a race and remained high throughout the competition, similar to the heart rates of people engaged in vigorous athletic activity. Interestingly, the driver’s heart rate also spiked when the car slowed to a stop, indicating that the driver’s heart rate is linked to the performance of the car as well.
The partnership will also see NTT and SAP create a global reference that could be a universal standard model. NTT claims to have been working on establishing business platform as well as IT infrastructure to generate a synergy in the group, and to do so, NTT is going to utilize the latest SAP solutions.
