NTT R&D is the research and development organisation of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), Japan’s largest telecommunications group. In the EU–Japan ClouT project it developed the CIL-based virtual machine running on the custom sensor boards that turned Fujisawa’s garbage trucks into a mobile sensing fleet.
NTT R&D brings together the research laboratories of the NTT group, working across networking, communications, computing, sensing and data technologies. Its work ranges from basic research to technologies that are transferred into NTT’s operating companies and into collaborative projects with cities, universities and industry partners.
In ClouT (2013–2016), the EU–Japan Cloud of Things project, NTT R&D was a Japanese partner and service and cloud provider, and developed the Common Intermediate Language (CIL)-based virtual machine used on the custom sensor board fitted to Fujisawa’s refuse collection vehicles. The board carried GPS updated every second and thirteen types of environmental sensor, with readings sent over 3G to a remote server every 30 seconds. The instrumented fleet gave the city a record of actual collection routes for the first time and a street-level air quality dataset shared with residents.
NTT R&D works to turn research in communications and information technology into infrastructure that supports society, including sensing and data systems that help cities run their services more efficiently and inform residents.
Communications and network research; cloud services and embedded software for IoT sensing, including the CIL-based virtual machine used on the ClouT on-vehicle sensor boards; data collection and transmission for mobile sensing platforms; and technology transfer into NTT group operating companies and collaborative research projects.
