"2022 TRON Symposium — TRONSHOW" was held from Wednesday, December 7 to Friday, December 9, 2022 to disseminate the result of the activities of TRON Project for the past year. Once again, we are delighted that we could hold a hybrid of real and online events. The catchphrase for the last year's TRONSHOW was "Next Generation Infrastructure." The theme was what the next step in the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure would be after rebooting the platform as the catchphrase of the TRONSHOW two years ago was "Rebooting."
As part of the next step, "all-photonics communication paths," an innovation at the level of the basic technology is what TRON Project considers important. IOWN Project aims at "all-photonics communication paths." It predicts that the next generation all-photonics networks will have 125 times the bandwidth, 1/100 times the consumed power, and 1/200 times the latency of the current network technology. TRONSHOW introduced IOWN in detail during the keynote speech, special session and technology session.
The ultra-low latency of all-photonics network makes it possible to perform surgery remotely by a surgeon in a place 100 kilometers away as if the doctor were in the next room. An e-sports game that connects multiple players in distant locations can be played without any handicap due to the distance between the server and the players, giving equal response latency to players. Thus, the infrastructure that is based on the all-photonics network will introduce innovation to the architecture of real-time embedded systems to which TRON Project pays special attention. For this reason, TRON Forum will deepen collaboration with IOWN Global Forum which promotes IOWN by setting up working groups to liaise with the forum and other measures.
The year 2022 saw the future where AI would change the world being very close to realization. So, the data collection for AI will be performed in the "Open Smart UR," IoT future housing project by installing 100 sensors in the 39 square meter floor space of "Living Monitoring Residences," an experimental housing that can be actually lived. TRONSHOW introduced this in detail during the keynote speech, display by the organizer and theater session on the second day.
On the last day of the TRONSHOW, The Association for Open Data of Public Transportation (ODPT) in which I serve as chair signed an MOU for strategic partnership with Mobility Data, an NPO with its activity centers in Canada and France. Mobility Data promotes standardization of public transportation data such as GTFS and GBFS. Public Transportation Open Data Center operated by ODPT has released data that uses GTFS format, and many maps and navigation applications such as Google map have used it. ODPT will commit itself to the support of public transportation open data and its standardization more after this MOU signing.
Also, during the TRONSHOW, the opening of "Open Data Challenge for Smart Logistics by Daiwa House Industry" was announced. The contest with prize money of five million yen in total will be held in cooperation with Hitachi Transport System, Ltd. to make the vital data of truck drivers and dashboard camera data available as open data. The contestants vie to come up with effective use of such data. We look forward to your participation.
TRON Project started in 1984. It will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year. Last year there was very good news for me and the project. I am delighted to report that I will receive Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Masaru Ibuka Consumer Technology Award in 2023. The prize will be given to me “For leadership in creating open and free operating systems for embedded computers used in consumer electronics." This is a very favorable evaluation of the TRON Project activity. I feel this award is also given to the members and other parties who have supported the project over the years. I truly appreciate every person who contributed to the project.
I would like to continue the project to make sure we can create a better world which will be built on top the new platform of the future. Thank you all for your continuing support of TRON Project this year.
Ken Sakamura