Whether it’s in a tiny Swedish development drone no bigger than a slice of toast, or a lumbering garbage truck in the streets of Nairobi, Bluemix technology can be found on the move across the world. Check out these case studies:

Crazyflie Drones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rjpwJaDhz4

Malmö, Sweden-based Bitcraze has created a handheld drone called Crazyflie, which weighs 27 grams and is equipped with long-range radio. It’s open sourced and expandable – almost like an airborne Raspberry Pi.

The Bluemix cloud is used as part of the mechanism to pilot the drone, either through an app or a gaming controller, significantly reducing development time. “It really saved us a lot of work when we got started,” says Bitcraze co-founder and developer Marcus Eliasson.

Fixing Nairobi’s Roads

To monitor the Kenyan capital’s traffic and construction needs, city officials fitted their fleet of garbage trucks with specially adapted mobile devices that used acceleration, gyroscopic and location data. As the trucks make their rounds, the devices upload their data to the cloud.

Bluemix is then used to deliver the results of the analysis to officials, accessible on mobile and desktop. “For the first time, city officials have a clear understanding of where potholes and speed bumps are,” says Dr. Aisha Walcott-Bryant of IBM Research Africa.

Speedboat Racing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHGTmHEwr14

SilverHook designs high-speed racing watercraft reaching speeds of up to 200 mph. Pilots have access to real-time feedback about the race through IBM Watson Analytics and Bluemix was used to rapidly develop and deploy this infrastructure, cutting development time by 40 per cent.

Ian Taylor, CEO of Animation Research, which works with SilverHook, says that the speed boat’s pilot receives data in real time helping drivers make decisions on the fly.

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