This week’s Smart City roundup features a partnership for smart offices, smarter cities and smarter ballparks.

Robin partners with Konica Minolta

Robin Powered, Inc., the company behind the smart office software Robin, has partnered with Konica Minolta, Inc., a Japanese technology company, along with Fundfire, Trani Capital, Ty Danco, Tony Kreisel, Matt Peters and Brennan White. This endeavor will allow Konica to deliver better and smarter workplace equipment for the modern office.

“We are excited to be partnering closely with Robin Powered and are really impressed with how they are leveraging presence-sensing technology to define the workplace of the future. Their intuitive solution drives efficiency and fluid collaboration in office spaces,” said Ekta Sahasi, vice president of Business Innovation Center for Konica Minolta.

Robin specializes in automated room booking, and since its launch, it has helped many schedule rooms for meetings and other activities without any hassles. The company also announced the availability of Robin Rooms, a new tablet app that gives members of a team a way to manually claim space for an impromptu meeting even if they have never downloaded the app. And the beta version of Robin API will give developers the opportunity to interact with their Robin data, such as locations, spaces, presence and others, and build third-party apps that would extend the Robin experience.

Cisco to build smarter cities

Cisco Systems, Inc. announced a partnership with ILFS Technologies Ltd., an Indian infrastructure company, at the Cisco India Summit 2014 in Bengaluru. The two companies will jointly develop digital infrastructure and smart cities in India. The partnership will focus on creating solutions for traffic management, public safety and e-governance so citizens can benefit from services like finding parking spots easier and lower lighting and water bills.

“With this partnership, we aim to develop India centric technologies to digitize the country. The collaboration will focus on delivering core infrastructure, creating a smart ecosystem and service delivery,” said Dinesh Malkani, president of Sales, Cisco India and SAARC.

Croke Park gets smart

The Dublin City University, Arizona State University (ASU), the GAA and Intel Corp. are collaborating to turn two game parks, Croke Park and ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium, into smart ones that would help game attendees appreciate the games better.

The stadiums will be fitted with Internet of Things (IoT) technologies that would give way to applications that deliver scene replay, athlete performance monitoring via wearable sensing, fan experience and in-stadium engagement, safety and emergency response, crowd movement, and control and traffic management.

“A lot of innovation happening in this [IoT] space is focused on gambling, which doesn’t really suit ourselves. We want to manage queues, provide additional information to fans, allow them to order food from their seats, etc.,” stated Croke Park Stadium Director Peter McKenna.