Research to develop Milton Keynes further as a smart city

OU academics have been awarded £202,000 from Milton Keynes Council to develop Milton Keynes further as a smart city.

Led by Dr Enrico Daga, Research Fellow in the OU’s Knowledge Media Institute (KMi), this new grant will design and install an experimental 5G network that will be used to test scenarios where increased capacity for mobile data usage will improve city services such as autonomous vehicles, health and wellbeing and communication services.

Working with a consortium of partners including MK Council, BT, Huawei, the Connected Places and Satellite Application Catapults, the KMi team will focus on further developing the MK Data Hub to support the new scenarios made possible by the 5G infrastructure.

Mr Alan Fletcher, Business Development/Laboratory Manager in KMi said:

“This is a fantastic opportunity for us to engage with technical leaders in 5G as well as play a part in the continued smart city journey of Milton Keynes. As the only academic partner in the consortium we are especially pleased that the value of research activity continues to be recognised in MK.”

MK:5G is the latest in a long line of Smart City initiatives that have been secured in no small part thanks to the MK:Smart project, which led to the award-winning MK Data Hub which was recently applied to power the world’s first Smart City Robot competition in Central Milton Keynes.