The company also upgraded 2,000 intersections in Zhengzhou with AI-powered traffic lights designed to optimise traffic flow and combat traffic violations. — LOW LAY PHON/The Star
While some may associate a smart city with futuristic technologies like autonomous robots and drones patrolling the streets, the reality is that a lot of their impact can be found in the subtler things that quietly streamline daily life.
Take for instance Henan Shengzhiyuan Intelligent Technology Co Ltd's smart lighting solutions, which are being showcased at the Smart City Expo Kuala Lumpur 2025 (SCEKL25).
According to a spokesperson with the company, its smart street light project implemented in Zhengzhou, China has seen a reduction in energy consumption in the city by 60%.
"Due to its adaptive brightness adjustment, the street lights can adjust by themselves, with the option to individually set the brightness levels for each one.
"This means that, let's say between 2am to 5am when there's hardly any traffic on the road, the system can adjust the brightness of the lamp, and this will product huge energy savings.
"And then, if a car is going back somewhere late at night, it will trigger a sensor to switch on the light by itself," they said, adding that maintenance support was reduced from 24 hours down to just two hours.
This is due to faulty street lights reporting their status to a command centre, which monitors all the smart city technologies.
Each LED light in the street lamps is estimated to have a 50,000-hour lifespan, which translates to about eight years of continuous use, assuming they are kept on for 12 hours a day, which the spokesperson said is unlikely due to the automatic dimming and shut-off system in place.
The company also upgraded 2,000 intersections in Zhengzhou with artificial intelligence (AI)-powered traffic lights designed to optimise traffic flow and combat traffic violations.
This has allowed for green wave – the timing of green traffic lights to allow for continuous traffic flow – coordination in parts of the city where the smart traffic lights have been implemented, reducing traffic jams by 30%.
It has further reduced delays by 17% and improved traffic efficiency by between 16% to 30%. Using this technology, the flow of traffic can be adjusted based on the needs of the local city council as well.
Henan Shengzhiyuan's spokesperson added that the technology has already been deployed in Lahore, Pakistan, resulting in a reduction in intersection accident rates by 28%, and the capturing of an average of 30,000 traffic violations per month.
They also stressed that this is only enabled by leveraging multimodal AI, which combines data from multiple sources, including from text, cameras, audio, and other sensors – much like how humans use sight, hearing, and touch.
The key difference though is that a human can only process and interpret a limited amount of information and data, which a multimodal AI is capable handling a significantly larger amount from multiple sources simultaneously.
"In the field of intelligent transportation, AI can collect and analyse massive amounts of traffic data in real time, such as vehicle flow, speed, and road congestion information captured by cameras and sensors.
"Based on this data, AI algorithms can optimise traffic signal timing, allowing traffic lights to adjust dynamically according to actual traffic conditions, thereby alleviating congestion and improving road throughput efficiency," they said.
