I will not be mistaken if I say that the first genuinely smart cities, albeit in miniature, will be the science cities and campuses of leading technological universities. Having read the description of the project Highpark (ITMO University’s science city) (link available in Russian — Ed.) and the project PhysTech of the 21st century (science city of MIPT) (link available in Russian — Ed.) I would like to feature the possibilities for such science cities of the 21st century; opportunities in the line of a smart city that are available for implementation now or are already being implemented today.

Smart campus

Automated access control to campus territory, control of parking spaces, bicycle rental and smart lighting are the features available for each university today. And basically, many of them are planning on doing it. But what more exciting can we do? Yale University took on the task of making their campuses “green”, for instance. As far as I know, the management of Yale University is currently working on putting in practice competitions between individual buildings of the university: in terms of friendliness to the environment and utilitarianism. The practice to calculate your own electricity costs, use alternative energy sources, control the collection and utilization of garbage, while at the same time competing in the achieved savings results after the introduction of different technologies on your territory is a great way to speed up the modernization process, and involve your employees and students in the science city’s life.

What else can we offer to smart campuses?

Since for competitive evaluation each campus will actually go under control of its own cyber-physical system, it will have its own automated control system (hereinafter ACS), then I simply can not, but offer campuses to create a common digital market for their university to serve the needs of campuses. Knowing the state of deterioration of the building’s parts and equipment, the need for regular maintenance (for example climate systems and water purification systems), as well as the mere ordering of water for coolers on the floors and ordering of cleaning — all of these can be performed by the campus’s ACS itself.

Mobile robotics

On the premises of Google autopilot taxis are available for employees. And on the premises of some universities autopilot buses already run. A trip from campus to campus on a robotic minibus equals +5 to the student’s inspiration! The combination of autopilot system based on GPS-tracker for route guidance and computer vision to avoid collisions on the route at low speed and smart adult traffic participants is safe. Moreover, it is also feasible and can be performed by the student design engineering bureau.

And it would be great to have at least a couple (one is really not enough) of Duckietowns for experiments. I have seen them in Innopolis (first Russian smart city in Tatarstan — Ed.) and at the Technological University of Munich (TUM). And probably almost everywhere, where there are at least some mentions of ground mobile robotics, there is its own duckie town.

What else can be done?

Roofs: in the light of the development of drone delivery. The roof is the best place for landing UAVs for cargo dumping, as well as recharging. And here we are killing 2 birds with one shot:

You can create your own warehouse for delivery on the premises of the university at its entrance, where any goods for residents of the science city will be delivered. The address delivery can be implemented on drones. To see how the drone carries the next gadget for someone else equals +10 to the certainty that I want to study here!

Smart campuses can also sell charging on their roofs to drones which have delivered their cargos there. This way we get machine-to-machine payments and multi-purpose use of the smart campus.

Autonomous FabLab or workshops as a service

The already existing concept of public workshops, in which each student can create a single-piece detail for their experiment, is able to gain autonomy. FabLabs need to solve two important issues, in my opinion: the distribution of their working time in a competitive environment among students, as well as the payback — in order to last for centuries.

Both of these tasks can be solved by creating a market for the services of the FabLab:

FabLab, as an autonomous economic robot-agent, will offer its services with an indication of the price that would be enough to cover the cost of its services entirely.

Students who purchase FabLab services receive an electronic access key based on the purchased offer from the FabLab and thus will be provided access to the equipment.

Transparent control of citizens’ data

No matter how much we would like to preserve the privacy of our lives, we can not renounce the advantages that the information system that collects information about us gives us. Data on a person’s life in modern society have a high price even if viewed solely from the perspective of organizing the satisfaction of the user’s needs. We certainly would like banks to offer more personalized loans without asking for 100,500 references. And when you are a vegetarian you would not want Google to offer you a meat restaurant next door for dinner with a postscript “The best place for two”! And this, for instance, is the project of Eduardo Castello from MIT on confederation of robots for teaching robot-helper of the person with autism.

But still we can retain control over personal data, for example by implementing projects like uPort. Having implemented a system of sovereign democracy that will allow controlling with a personal key what the services of the university know about me will give me a level up to my diligence in studying and wanting to live in this science city of the 21st century!

Gamification in studying

Experiments in game theory and community modeling fit well in the daily life of the science city — observation, description and propositions. Turning term thesises into experiments on the territory of the university. The student’s offer to their professor in the format: “Reducing the consumption of electricity on campus by 5% due to the introduction of water mills”, and its implementation in the digital simulation of the campus economy. Badges of merit in the format: “Guru of Autonomous Systems” is awarded for 3 fully autonomous campus services, “Engineer-capitalist” is awarded for maximum participation in the growth of GDP of the campus for no less than 6 months.