Dubai to outfit waterfront destinations with futuristic technology

Per recent reports in “Gulf News”, Dubai will soon install 103 Smart Palms on a select number of its beaches, with the goal being to eventually install this technology on all public beaches too. 

The trees will provide Wi-Fi, act as a charging station, and also provide weather information to beach-goers, all at no expense.

Taking a bit of a closer look, the Smart Palm trees will be about six meters tall and designed to look like a date palm tree. They will be able to support 50 users at a time, offer eight recharging ports, several multimedia screens, and a public announcement system, too. 

Some other things worth noting: each tree will be linked to a central control center and monitored 24/7. They will be outfitted with a 360-degree infrared CCTV camera and an emergency button. Also, they will be self-sufficient, as they’ll include crystal solar panels which, in case you’re unfamiliar, provide roughly 20% efficiency. These panels are able to achieve such high efficiency due to their unique matrices of photovoltaic modules which were specially designed to fit the shape of palm leaves.

At the end of the day, this approach provides complete power autonomy for each Smart Palm.

The Smart Palm initiative took the different needs of different smartphones into consideration during the design process. The aforementioned eight charging ports per tree offer different mobile phone charger types for all the different phones on the market today. The Smart Palm site said that the "Seating area is available next to each Palm for resting and relaxation during the battery charging process, as well as for comfortable internet browsing via the complimentary Wi-Fi access."

And because it’s Dubai, there’s an added level of pampering: "Our Smart Palm Recharge stations are capable of charging all batteries 2.5 times faster than the regular charging speed," the site states.