Hitachi will reopen the exhibits at its building technologies lab in Tokyo next month to reflect recent innovations.

The tech giant says it will significantly expand the exhibits at Hitachi Building Solutions Lab, a customer co-creation research facility that first opened in April 2023. The exhibition is being expanded to refect digital innovation in the field of buildings.

To address social issues, including the decline in the working population and carbon neutrality, the exhibition will use AI, digital twin and augmented reality (AR) technologies to propose the latest offerings addressed by One Hitachi, including HMax for Buildings: BuilMirai, a suite of products that combine domain knowledge and AI.

In the future, Hitachi says it will advance collaborative creation with developers, design offices, construction companies, owners of buildings, building management companies and other users, as well as with partners at the lab.

The exhibition will show building management using physical AI realised using digital-twin technologies. To address the labour shortage in building management operations, the exhibition will propose a future vision for building management in a demonstration that combines AI and digital twins. This will be based on technologies being developed by Hitachi’s research and development group.

Visitors will be able to experience a digital twin for the operation of a guide robot in a physical space after they view options proposed by an AI agent based on the results of people flow analyses, and provide instructions to the robot in a virtual space.

Another exhibit will show the role air conditioning and demand control play in decarbonising and reducing energy expenses of buildings with a view towards achieving carbon neutrality in 2050. The experience-based exhibition visualises Hitachi’s Exiida air conditioning IoT offering that controls an actual business-use air conditioning system using AR technologies.

Another exhibit will propose experiences that facilitate seamless movement using integrated elevators and other building equipment with a view to supporting people’s diverse workstyles and increasing safety and quality of life. Visitors will experience the link between the connected features of Hitachi’s standard elevator set to be released in April 2026 and mobile robots. There will be connections with a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) system capable of supplying power to elevators and other building equipment by connecting to electric vehicles during a power outage.

There will also be a security system using an Apple Wallet authentication. In this system, users’ identification documents and driver’s licences are registered in the Apple Wallet application so the user’s identity and age can be verified in real time using face ID, touch ID or NFC.

To address increasingly diverse and complicated social issues and mission-critical areas, the exhibition will showcase examples of Hitachi’s technology including AI safety offerings to facilitate increased work efficiency and improved safety for frontline engineers, Hitachi’s generative AI agent for the provision of dialogue-based information on the operation and maintenance of industrial equipment, and connected home appliances.

For more on Hitachi building systems, go to www.hbs.co.jp or the firm’s corporate web site at www.hitachi.com.