PTC and InVMA supporting a winning project at Birmingham City University Innovation Fest

May 30th and 31st at Millennium Point, the Birmingham City University hosted Innovation Fest, an event offering businesses the opportunity to experience the creative talent emerging from Birmingham City University’s faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment.

As part of their studies, Birmingham City University learners are encouraged to work on business-linked projects, aimed at coming up with digital and technology-based prototypes addressing industry challenges, utilising the latest research and innovation available.

As the university plans to expand its Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment faculty by IoT dedicated programme, a group of university students was given an opportunity to use real life Industrial IoT platform, ThingWorx to develop their project measuring traffic density in a building.

The project was named SMARTCIRC and was named as an overall winner with the maximum number of points.

SMARTCIRC is a promising smart facility management project, where the student team leveraged ThingWorx for creating an application through which they recorded data from sensors’ activity, analyzed it and predicted foot traffic data patterns inside of buildings. The main purpose was to create a feasible, smart system for a brand new building, where the School of Computing at Birmingham City university will be transferred in 2020 but the concepts suits with various building structures (airports, malls, hospitals, etc).

" [I'm] very proud of the project me and the team have managed to work on over these last few months at the university." comments  Thomas Griffith, First Year Computer Networks Security Student, member of  SMARTCIRC  project team "We used motion sensors to record data so that we can analyse it and predict foot traffic data patterns inside of buildings. Integrating LoRaWAN radio waves technology with The Things Network and ThingWorx, a PTC Technology. Thanks to all the university staff and mentors, as well as the external businesses for the help and support along the way. I look forwards to continuing to push this project beyond this course module."

The ThingWorx platform was developed by PTC which, in its recent report, Gartner identified as a visionary in IIoT. The company attended the event together with InVMA, their leading partner in UK and Ireland, to promote PTC Academic Programme. Many international universities already benefited from the programme helping them develop the next generation of engineers and innovators.

“It was the first time for us to attend the Innovation Fest. It was very impressive to see the variety of the submitted projects.” Comments Bernhard Eberl, Director Global Education Sales at PTC “We are looking forward to extending our collaboration with BCU and to seeing further projects leveraging our IoT and AR technology.”

“The university welcomes partners like InVMA and PTC. We see that the ThingWorx platform, with Industrial IoT, PLM, and AR capabilities will enable BCU to expand Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment faculty by IoT dedicated programme that will offer real life experience and prepare students for future careers in IoT” adds Dr Adel Aneiba, a senior lecturer in Computer Networks and IoT at Birmingham City University.

About InVMA
InVMA designs, develops and deploys applications and hardware that improve or transform the way organisations do business.

As a new breed of IoT systems integrator, InVMA develops innovative solutions tailored to suit the new opportunities offered by connected devices and the Internet of Things. We rapidly turn a client vision into new revenue streams, enhanced customer satisfaction and operational efficiency into real solutions that work.

The first European ThingWorx partner, InVMA is the only company in the UK and Ireland that brings together:

• Experienced Hardware Engineers, Software Developers and Business Consultants
• Industry leading scalable IoT platform, PTC ThingWorx^TM
• Proven software and hardware, commissioning methods developed over 15 years
• Practical continuous improvement and lean change management methods
• Partnerships with legacy and new hardware vendors providing comprehensive edge connectivity
• A service, support and update capability

About PTC
PTC has the most robust Internet of Things technology in the world. In 1986 we revolutionized digital 3D design, and in 1998 were first to market with Internet-based PLM. Now our leading IoT and AR platform and field-proven solutions bring together the physical and digital worlds to reinvent the way you create, operate, and service products. With PTC, global manufacturers and an ecosystem of partners and developers can capitalize on the promise of the IoT today and drive the future of innovation.