Featured Application: Gigabots
With a Gigabot, educators and students have the opportunity to explore new ideas and create new types of devices that would not be possible without gigabit connectivity. Gigabots inherently have the capability to communicate with other Gigabots, whether they are local or remote. This provides students the opportunity to explore ideas in autonomy, swarm behavior, and remote sensing not possible with unconnected devices.
Community Profile:
Calling the Plays for a Smarter Kansas City Area.
Straddling the border between Kansas and Missouri, the Kansas City metro area is known for its barbecue, its music, and its beautiful public spaces. With the implementation of a new fiber network, a new side of the city is ready to open up: gigabit applications are allowing coders, educators, and government officials to explore a world of new possibilities.
For example, the Gigabots program brings real-time internet connectivity to educational robotics platforms. The Gigabot—a combination of hardware, software and a cloud platform that connects each one to each other—is taking schools and presentation events in the area by storm, offering a glimpse at the our autonomous machine future while offering practical implications in the here and now. Meanwhile, Integrated Roadways is turning local roads into a digital network, connecting drivers to the internet while supporting driverless vehicle technology. With the Smart Pavement™ system, ordinary roads are embedded with digital technology and fiber optic connectivity, turning them into smart roads.
KC Digital Drive stepped up to the plate to help steward the Kansas City area into a new interconnected digital age when Google Fiber brought it’s high-speed network to the area. The opportunity was tremendous—after all, Kansas City was the first Google Fiber city, and one of the first to adopt the US Ignite Digital Town Square approach that creates consistent experiences for city residents regardless of network. In a region with strong manufacturing and agriculture industries, officials have pushed forward in recent years to create what is now considered one of the most connected smart cities in the nation. KC Digital Drive has helped steward the city through a “playbook” detailing how to bring digital access to the entire community, expand economic opportunities, and create next-generation innovations.
As one of US Ignite’s first Smart Gigabit Communities, the greater Kansas City area has already saturated it’s innovation ecosystem with gigabit thinking and implemented gigabit applications into its communities while hosting hackathons to continue pushing innovations out through the SGC Program that will benefit the city through civic technology.
