Program

Prof. Gisele Bennett, Chair of the IoT for Logistics Track

Mr. KC Fung,  Senior Manager, IT Planning & Strategy, Information Technology, Airport Authority Hong Kong

HKIA has a vision of becoming a smart airport. One of the technology focus of smart airport is to make use of Internet of Things (IoT) technology to build a digital twin of the airport. The presentation will talk about some of the current IoT applications at HKIA such as RFID based baggage handling and GPS tracking of airfield vehicles; as well as some of the new and planned IoT initiatives.

 Prof. CH Cheng, Dept. of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Internet of things (IoT) has received attention of researchers in smart living technologies in recent years. In this talk, we will explore how IoT technologies may be applied to improve the quality of life in a modern city like Hong Kong. Further, we will discuss our implementation examples in airport services, museum operations, and public safety, etc. Challenges and opportunities in these projects will be shared.

 Prof. Kim-Fung Tsang, Department of Electronic Engineering , City University of Hong Kong

 Current localization schemes often employ GPS at outdoor and other wireless localization techniques at indoor (e.g. Wifi). In general, switching is needed between outdoor and indoor and vice versa. The switching potentially causes a loss of localization accuracy, at least at the transition point. Classically, the transmission range of most commonly available wireless platforms are short range, rendering high latency. LoRa, by nature, appears to be the right candidate for long-range applications in logistics and transportation. A high-performance long-range seamless indoor-outdoor localization system based on LoRa will be designed and implemented to track down trolleys in the Hong Kong airport. Analytics will be performed to help decision making e.g. record/predict the behavior of clients, position of trolleys, …etc. With slight modifications, such a system can be modified to adapt to similar or associated logistics applications which are related to vehicle travel between outdoor and indoor, to upload and unload deliverable between extremities.

Dr. Frank Tong, Director of Research and Technology, Hong Kong LSCM R&D Centre

Logistics is one of the pillar industries in HK. In the contemporary trends of ASEAN trades and Belt-and-Road Developments, Hong Kong’s logistics industry is also striving for new technologies and new practices to meet the challenges. In this talk, I shall be sharing with the audience the smart logistics technology development in HK, particularly about the success case of cross-boundary customs clearance system. Besides, selected examples of smart IT infrastructure for logistics operations and pilot implementations with forward-looking practitioners will be presented.

Trends and Challenges in adopting IoT in Hong Kong

Moderator

Mr. Simon Wong, CEO, Hong Kong LSCM R&D Centre

Panelists

Mr. KC Fung,  Senior Manager, IT Planning & Strategy, Information Technology,  Airport Authority Hong Kong

Prof. CH Cheng, Dept. of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, The Chinese University of Hong

Prof. Kim-Fung Tsang, Department of Electronic Engineering , City University of Hong Kong

Dr. Frank Tong, Director of Research and Technology, Hong Kong LSCM R&D Centre

Dr. Bernard Leong Chung Wei – AirBus

In the recent years, there has been considerable interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and autonomous vehicles. In this talk, I discussed the challenges in bringing these technologies into the real world, and what it means for the supply chains in urban smart cities, logistics and agriculture

Dr. Prof. Luca Urciuoli, Associate Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Department of Industrial Economics and Management, Stockholm and Adjunct Professor at the MIT International Logistics program in Zaragoza, Spain

Dr. Ninja Huang, Lab Group Manager at General Motors Global R&D Center

Prof. Fei-Yue Wang, Vice President and Secretary General of Chinese Association of Automation

In this presentation, a new paradigm of logistics, Parallel Logistics, is introduced. Parallel Logistics (PL) aims to tackle the inherent nature of complexity, diversity and uncertainty in socialized logistics, and to provide a solution based on the Parallel System theory and the ACP approach. Following a full view of Parallel System theory in the new Intelligence Technology era, PL’s technical framework and applications are illustrated and addressed in detail for building the next generation logistics ecological system.

Dr. NG Poh Khai, Innovation Leader | Senior Manager, Asia Pacific Innovation Center

Presentation to include:

•       Broad overview of DHL’s Trend approach to innovation and focus (i.e. IoT among other trends)

•       DHL’s approach to IoT as a key innovation trend

•       Opportunities in the Logistics industry – use-cases

 Dr. Justin Dauwels, Associate Professor of the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore

 There is considerable interest related to management of fleet of autonomous vehicles in both academia and industry. Robust and reliable commercial deployment of fleet of autonomous vehicles is impeded by the lack of the following two technologies. First, an integrated approach is lacking that can encompass all different aspects of the problem, including mobility models of vehicles, communication network and application environment, customer demand prediction, and real-time information about the transportation network.

Second, autonomous vehicles are still in trial phase, hence sufficient realistic field data may not be available in next few years. An integrated simulator can prove highly useful in bridging that gap. Such simulators would still be highly useful once the technology matures as they would provide an effective platform for developing further applications involving fleets of autonomous vehicles.

In this presentation, we will give an overview of our progress in both these directions.

Prof Guanghua YANG, Associate Dean, Institute of Physical Internet, Jinan University

 With the rapid growth of global business activities, it becomes essential for the firms to manage the logistics flow and to track their goods properly. Continuous monitoring and end-to-end tracking are critical for shipments of high-end goods, such as jewelry, electronic products, and legal documents. In this project, we developed the next-generation tracking devices and technologies, which support continuous, real-time, and ubiquitous goods-level tracking. By leveraging the strengths of different wireless technologies, the project realize the hybrid and collaborative positioning and communication. With the innovative design, the system enjoys a better service availability, lower total cost of ownership, operation and maintenance. The effectiveness of the proposed mechanism were demonstrated by two pilot business projects.

Prof. Zhi Ning, Prof. National University of Singapore

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology are being rapidly developed in recent years. In particular, their applications have been widely  found  in Internet of Things (IoT) such as service industries, distribution logistics, manufacturing companies, product-flow systems and so on. Antenna design for both readers and tags is one of the key factors in all RFID systems. The optimized tag and reader antenna design will greatly benefit to RFID systems with longer reading range, better detection accuracy, lower fabrication cost, and simple system configuration and implementation.

Working Group Discussion (All Speakers and Audience Members – What is working and not working?  How can IEEE move the industry forward?)