Kawantech has been created by skilled entrepreneurs experienced in connected vehicles and infrastructure

Cities need a digital infrastructure to help citizens get a new generation of public services around mobility. A modern city uses new technologies to bring safety and improve the citizen experience.

However, the Smart City can't be built as extension of smart Cars and Smartphones. Thoses are private properties which can't be used by the city. Having reliable sensors, maintained H24, and connecting them without beeing open to tempering requires a dedicated digital infrastructure. The bet at the origin of Kawantech was to converge with the silicon and software used for car automation, which are very close to Smartphones plateforms.

Using a new generation of advanced "Smart" processors and sensors is the only path to finance and deploy a digital infrastructure. Billions of such components are built, and maintained 10+ years for the automotive industry.

Back to 2011, Kawantech focused on improving the first electrified service delivered to citizens by the city : the light. How to reduce its cost while increasing its presence and felt power.

First NPone Smart lantern exposed at Lumiville show in 2011. ( Nplus brand was a sister company of Kawantech building complete luminaries.)

This smart Streetlight was connected to a street gateway/manager device. This gateway supported inter-luminary communications as well as motion analysis in the street.

The NPOne light specificity relied in its highly optimized efficiency. This lantern managed 12 elementary light flux individually. The light footpring was dynamically adapted to people or car motion and requirements.

Due to a lack of reliability and operationnal performance of LEDs versus Sodium lighting, cities were slow to adopt LEDs. The requirement to configure a street in order to activate its energy tools was cumbersome. In Europe most deployments of streetlights are made 7 units per 7 units. The project was postponed.

Lean startup : design product with the user

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In 2014, the city of Toulouse lighting service asked Kawantech to make a reassesment of its product specification. With a goal on autonomous smart lighting, a business model was envisonned by the city lighting manager, J.Lavergne. The views matched was Kawantech learned about Smart city / Smart Lighting : simplicity is the only path to succeed. A joint study of requirements led to a business model ( cost of sensor + targeted energy reduction + maintenance/MTBF). Toulouse Metropole and Kawantech agreed to develop a test a such solution in 4 streets in 2015 without communications publicly. Far from the common way with Startups, often willing to communicate on Proof Of Concept, this experiment was done in order to confirm citizen comfort with adaptive lighting and measure energy usage during a year.

This step in 2015 opened a public market for 485 streetlights deployed in 2016. A total of 17Km of Toulouse streets were deployed with a goal of 10 years of operation. The addition of the Kawantech analytic motion sensor, Kara, confirmed a 65% energy reduction when added to a LEd streetlight ( more than 80% compared to previous installed streetlight). At beginning of 2018 seven cities are operationnal, including Paris.

Kawantech reinforced its team and applied new fields of application for its Kara motion sensor : extend analysis to all mobilities. With a focus on Smart Parking. Toulouse is experimenting it with Citelum-EDF in Q1 2018. Results and capacity to deploy it with existing lighting services created a path to expand very quickly a digital road infrastructure.

Kawantech is now converging with cars and buses digital plateforms to feed them with a real time global motion map of the street. Managing traffic lights with a real knowledge of number of cars waiting as well as pedestrian bring a new improvement in street flow...

All worldwide streetlight networks are managed H24 and are already the core of the city passive safety. By definition the streetlight head is located to bring light to all areas where vehicles and pedestrians are allowed. It's the real "Cloud" network of the city.