TechCrunch Mobility 2021: iMerit CEO Radha Basu with Chris Barker & Michael Sherwood
hello and welcome to our roundtable discussion on how edge cases and data will enable autonomous transportation in cities across the united states i'm chris parker founder for cbc a global transportation technology and smart city focus consulting firm and our focus is on uh design and deployment of new mobility services and this morning i'm joined by two industry colleagues radha basu who is the founder and ceo of imerit a global data annotation services company delivering high quality data that powers machine learning and artificial intelligence applications for fortune 500 companies imerit has a workforce of more than four thousand people worldwide who provide end-to-end data labeling solutions and expertise to solve the most complex data scenarios for autonomy across air land and sea rada has led i married through two funding rounds raising 23 million dollars to date from investors and continues to grow the company to new revenue heights welcome rob hey good to be here chris and also we're joined by michael sherwood michael is the chief technology and innovation officer for the city of las vegas michael and his team were the first city in north america to deploy an autonomous shuttle service on open roads in a downtown corridor michael has more than 20 years of experience in the fields of process improvement technology and innovation most recently he served as the deputy director of public safety business services and city technology for the city of irvine california michael is extremely passionate about technology and believes through innovation workforce development and collaboration we can create brighter and sustainable communities welcome michael thank you chris it's a pleasure to be here today it's great to have you so i think we'll start michael with you uh nevada and the city of las vegas have been arguably some of the most progressive areas of the united states when it comes to enabling autonomous mobility new mobility services and i wanted to get your thoughts on can you describe a little bit about how your state and your market has approached and enabled successful deployment of everything from autonomous semi trucks uh to vehicles to autonomous shuttles and even drone applications uh and a little bit more specifically what were the policies and procedures from your team that's made a lot of this possible well we've come a long way chris and and and what we've been doing obviously nevada as a state um southern nevada the region las vegas is in um has always been a pioneer in innovation and technology you can see that it's kind of in our dna as a state but obviously as you've discussed the city of las vegas had the first shuttle in mixed flow traffic over 40 000 people shuttled on that autonomous vehicle uh again we just right before the pandemic had 75 bmws that were autonomously driving the strip um up and down um through a partnership with aptiv as well as hyundai or with bmw excuse me um and we've done that um everybody's heard of the boring company just opened up this week it's been running successfully shuttling passengers um around between our convention center that's underground so we've really been a leader in different types of multi-modal uh transportation um a lot of people forget already it's not that long ago we still have hyperloop being tested out here which is an above ground version of a mass transit system and that's still successfully moving through trials but overall it's it's nevada's strength as a state and southern nevada as a region to adopt new technologies to work on being the first to write the policies write the procedures develop the guidelines of how transportation will be not just adopted here but adopted across knack from a national level as well as a global level you know and we learn a lot when you are launching and testing these technologies you learn a lot about how you need the future plan your infrastructure how you need the future plan communications with your constituents in your community you know testing these technologies is one thing but getting the communication out to the community getting the community to understand the benefits you know you need that wide adoption and that's really what makes us kind of special is the fact that we have a community that is so used to where else in the world do you go where you know building maybe 15 years is blown up and a new building is built in its place bigger and better than before not many places have that kind of charisma and and entrepreneurial you know can do attitude that we do have here in las vegas which makes it a great place for business let alone testing great new innovative technologies and are there any particular uh policies that you feel have been more uh successful in proliferating these types of services across the region you know our our state government has done an excellent job as well as on the municipal level as well but it's really been those larger so in the very beginning of autonomy we were one of the first states to have um actually laws and policies put into place to allow autonomous vehicles to be on the road very important i think chris you mentioned it earlier drones we were federally designated by the federal government to be in a drone testing area we also have two drone test fields where actively companies are working on testing uh the city itself is working on a project um to bring more autonomous vehicles including a drone program forward so a lot of the legislation again um i don't want to narrow out any one singular piece of legislation because they're all progressing things forward but it's that attitude of let's get some legislation out there let's learn from it and then we can go back and tighten it up if we need to or broaden it if we need to but it's getting the companies the ability to have some kind of way of operating and it allows us to learn so we can write better um laws into the future or create better policy decisions going forward but i think you know to just sum it up quickly is nevada has been a leader in creating uh policies and regulations around new technology cutting edge technology um and that's why we're so happy i mean just the last one elon musk to have the boring company tunnel here you know one of the first cities um in the world to have that technology built out um where else are you going to see that done where else were the laws and the the way the government works with private sector where else could that be done in the time frame it was done there's only one place that that's right here and and speaking of the private sector uh rodda one i want to get your thoughts i know you and your team at imerit are really focused on the data analysis that makes autonomous and new mobility services possible and as michael's talked about all these different things that are going on in las vegas different types of mobility services all these different modes of transport are generating millions upon millions of lines of code and data and question for you as you look at from your side how are we as an industry equipped to kind of capture and process and analyze this data as we look at expanding these different mobility services across cities like las vegas and other markets can you give some some thoughts and perspective on what you're seeing yeah so you know we started imerit about eight years ago to create livelihoods jobs in the data economy and at that time it was so much of it and even five years ago was about the data science i really feel good about the bet we made that this will be a long lasting career opportunity for young people requiring as we go more and more special expertise and skill but let me tell you even we could not have anticipated the amazing ride our autonomous technology autonomous vehicle customers have taken us on we've been very lucky to have this ringside seat a window into all the innovation via the data which is now proving to be the major factor as ai goes into production data data and the quality of the data the edge cases being able to deal with that in a really proactive and very responsive way is turning out to be a major factor in the evolution so the next generation of robotic mobility and we say robotic mobility because that is aerial robots ground robots in the future even home robots which will improve general quality of life which we'll talk about later has a lot of innovation and radical digital transformation growing on and as michael said consumer acceptance navigating regulatory stuff safety requirements and the companies our clients have invested a lot in capturing a lot of image data video data lidar data now text speech to text and as they scale it's becoming increasingly complex and nuanced and high quality onboarding each city each new city will have new situations and challenges and what becomes really important which is sort of why we got into this topic here the edge cases in the new areas will define the last mile success of deployments an edge case is an unusual or exceptional situation but they could be caused by road conditions zones all kinds of things and we'll go into some of this later but if that is where the this breed of um people eye meriters are often called by our clients as edge casers in fact some of the people have on their linkedin i'm an edge caser because it is that nuanced human technology interaction and the knowledge that has come from many years of being on the ringside and being able to do the annotations of the data that bring the best information and action into that situation of the nuancing of the education so it makes it possible working with michael in terms of what are the next public works things happening automatically feeding that in to being able to do a live remap and being able to help our clients then get them into those cities as an example um are some of the things that we're very focused on and feel very very fortunate to have been in this situation to be able to offer that kind of skills and expertise hey roddy i'm glad you bring up the comment about scaling because i this is a question also for you michael when we look at what you've accomplished in your city and other cities are looking at bringing new mobility services uh they're starting as smaller pilot projects and ideally looking to ramp to bigger size deployments and scaling is a big question what do we need to get to that point and uh how does the data that rod is describing and the data that you're managing at the city level how do those two pieces come together for us to get to that scaling that everybody in industry is trying to accomplish and well yeah you bring up great points i mean look everything we've done even here and throughout most areas is small pilot projects learning the technology it's really it's not about the technology it's really more about the transfer of information from city vertical systems to the private sector or to some of these other companies um and how do we provide that flow of information i think rada you know really the point is let's look at at how many accidents we haven't had with all these autonomous systems why is that it's because you've taken the biggest factor in accidents which is the human driver out and you're using data um and that data is critical so going forward um you know we talked about it a little bit we already brought it up a little bit in the conversation but how when we're doing road work do we get that data out quicker to the consumer market so that that data can be adjusted by these autonomous systems and then accommodations be made for that how can we get more real-time traffic flow data out of our our vertical data centers and onto a horizontal plane where more people kind of access to the information information and data say it can save lives information and data can also power technology so it's really how or how are we doing now we're working on those types of scenarios now we have some intelligent uh roadway projects underway currently where we're actually linking our controllers so that we can broadcast that information you know in the last three or four years uh dsrc an older technology that's kind of i you know not here to start a debate today but it's kind of slowly fading away in favor of 5g but there was that capability and it's existed for many years now to send signalized traffic data when the lights are going to change from red to green and green to red to a vehicle in a safe and secure manner that technology exists today it just hasn't been widely adopted by the automakers you see a lot more of that adoption now in some of these newer upstart companies and i dare will not call tesla an upstart company but you'll see it in the newer types of vehicles that are coming out more of an integrated link with technology and you've seen the big automakers now following suit with more technology and all of that is is capturing more data um you know the biggest challenges are how do we all share data for the common good um that that's going to be a challenge and so you know we'll see how that plays out i i know government is working on it scaling it is not going to be once we have a a it's really we're lacking a foundation a framework once there's a national framework and foundation and a way to share this information more openly and securely you'll see more of an adoption of this technology um but you're in the infancy stages right now and and we're already seeing some good collaboration and scale coming up um as scale rises cost will come down and that will provide even more opportunity for data sharing i i think the biggest challenge right now and i'll let my colleague make sure she'll still set me straight here but i think the biggest challenge is how do we get some of these companies that have data that can be used by lots of companies to share that information well government will openly share its data sets how do we get some of the auto manufacturers that are driving the streets and collecting data on bad roads and they might have that information locked into their data system but they are unwilling to share it because they feel it takes a competitive advantage away from them if they openly share it with other automakers so i i do think the challenge is is going to be not collecting the data it's going to be how do we ensure privacy and how do we anonymize it and share it openly to build the best technology system versus bunch a bunch of individualized sys a ford system a gm system you know tesla you know how do we make it an open communications platform and to that point how do you feel from your side or where are we at as an industry and being able to not only collect the data but be able to analyze it and come up with the insights that are going to impact how mobility in cities ultimately function and operate what's your assessment of where we are and kind of where we need to get to so i think that this is slowly evolving and i could tell you that one of the key things that's resulted is the understanding first you have to understand you have to have a shared understanding that human in the loop data annotation human in the loop that means experts with the technology is the inevitable part to achieving full autonomy because in many of the things that michael's bringing up the humans can decipher some of these very complex rapidly changing on-road scenarios if you take for example some of the china's sports roads approach where road structures themselves provide signals so you can have smart road construction barricades that signal their presence this leader can come in and help with change management and exception flagging and tell us where to focus our efforts for temporary road edge cases i would say this will probably get michael excited you know there is no city like las vegas it's the ultimate edge case it's such a unique city and i love this interaction and working with michael because a city like las vegas can bring av to a medical district a sports an entertainment center a resort corridor whatever is needed and the way that pedestrian congestion many times first-time tourists all of these things signage i mean every as he said every couple every year some new construction is coming up and we need to be able to have data points capturing multiple times a day mapping traffic patterns seasonality timing of events and we will have to look at co-creating value from all of this data instead of a short-term approach and i fully agree with michael that making that available we put together something called the edge case module science sounds very simple but this technology that's able to actually aggregate across this and really get into an ecosystem of data sharing and doing this and balancing this with security and privacy and this data being seen more as a public good to really make autonomous mobility whether it's ground aerial uh even going into the home that kind of mobility it's really possible and that those scenarios are different they're different from boston or seattle and it's in that case are that way of looking at edge case scenarios and being able to have the expertise to aggregate across those and have the exceptions across those is that is the way i think and doing it in real time working with the cities getting there as i said earlier public work stuff new construction stuff getting that data into the systems so we can be proactive about it i think that is what will make autonomous mobility really skill i want to remind our audience that if you have questions please feel free to post those into the chat window and we'll be making time to address those questions at the back half of our session meanwhile michael going back to what rada was saying we look at the autonomous shuttle deployments as you did in the downtown corridor and some of these other projects that are underway can you talk about kind of the data learnings of you know if you decide to suddenly create a construction zone in an autonomous area how the dialogue is happening between your public works department and uh your team and the companies that are operating these autonomous systems so that there's an ability to plan and react to these scenarios or positively react to these scenarios can you can you describe how that process is playing out and how that can help inform other cities that are dealing with similar dynamic situations yeah it's a great question and it's a constant learning experience i don't think anybody has there's no magic bullet right now or no magic way of making these communications happen it's a it look any time you have innovation you have change change is hard for society as a whole um and so remember in a lot of systems and most municipal governments still are manually driven manual processes they're not even put into some kind of computerized system so the conversation started just at the very basic level and as we advance our technology it's more about now how do we create these data sets and under getting people to understand what a data set is why it's necessary um and so it is a challenge to to have those conversations internally especially when you're going to departments that have relied on a manual process you know switching to automation or you know is is one costly um for these some of these departments too necessary at some point in the juncture um but then it's having all this data and what do you do with this data how long do you keep the data there's a lot of policy decisions and and things that need to be addressed you know how long are you going to keep cone data do you need to keep it historically um do you not need to keep that data if you're going to do you know other types of roadway work um what does that mean um as far as that you need to provide a longer lead time a shorter lead time what about emergencies what about a light a traffic signal being out how are you going to take handle that data and get that out to people that are ingesting the data so there's a lot of these issues that are still you know it's a work in progress there's no um you know even even here and as much work that we have done and i'm you know this whole region of southern nevada has done a fabulous job um with modernizing their technology and collaborating we're very lucky we have a region we have a lot of regional boards where it's not controlled by one government city entity they're regional which makes sharing of information really phenomenally easy but it's still a matter of building the policies and procedures chris as you brought up in the very beginning you know we talked about state level policies and procedures now you got to bring it down to the micro level where it really matters which is the street level and creating those um takes time it's not something that you create in three months six months it's an ongoing process that really will become never ending as we continue to move and as we continue to modernize our traffic signal system from an analog system more to digital um and that's a whole other that's a whole other area and then obviously the wrapper that goes all around this which i i cannot help but to say is and it's on the minds of everybody i'm sure that's on this seminar right now you have security security will be a huge factor um not just privacy of the data but the security of it um and and what could happen if these systems are are disrupted or interrupted um that's a focal point that we we have to be concerned about but right now i think the biggest thing is just the education that we're going through seminars like this working with different layers of government because a whole new way of capturing this information it'll be a whole new way of sharing it and rodney you mentioned the edge cases so examples like public works projects where a road may be being redesigned a stop sign might be put in a traffic cone all sorts of unique scenarios are that are real in the dynamic nature of the city i'd love to get your thoughts first on how are you and your team identifying these edge cases figuring out how to analyze the data and provide the results back to folks like michael and then conversely michael you know how your when you look to expand new mobility services in the different parts of your city how you're considering these different unique dynamics so there's a collaborative discussion happening between you and the private sector well i'll start with rada so i will first start by agreeing with michael in in really agree that we are in the very early stages of this there is much work to be done to to get i mean we are you would say in if you're in a software cycle you would say we are in pre-production just going into production we have more than as you said four thousand um the of the annotation experts and we see a skill ladder from a simple object banning boxes to video tracking to complex lidar multi-sensor data to mapping let's not think of these as casual part-time occupations i believe that av at autonomous technology autonomous mobility data specialists will become as vital as air traffic controllers or driving instructors just in a different context what does that mean that you will have to look at the data at every step of the way and be able to do continuous learning and development continuous training continuous evolution with the new kinds of data we're getting and not think of this transactionally here's a transaction coming in fact even today as the vehicles are going into launch mode not even into full production and deployment people are asking us to look at and we're looking at it with consistency nuance insight quality over a period of time quality of a workflow quality of a parcel quality of a of a particular type of deployment quality of a particular technology being able to put all of this together and aggregate it in particular areas and scenarios in a city becomes very critical and we we are we i was talking about the edge case modules we have other technologies called ground control it is about bringing and aggregating all of this data and being able to share that with our clients who are the av the atan developers of the products and working with the cities themselves to make this data available in a very nuanced way so it's not a miraculous you know here's the miracle throw this out this will convert it automated it will be there and i think people like michael understand this better than than anybody else that or even this work will not end with deployment of av vehicles you will need audit you will need post analysis a person who does this work for three to five years becomes a domain expert and our whole focus is on developing this cadre of humans who are in the loop of the technology the evolving technology who become these instructors could air traffic controllers kinds of people who had the expertise to do that and having the technology to support them to support the av players and to support the cities like and um the uh the actual users of this like michael and michael the data sets that uh rodden describes if you have that level of detail and information how does that unlock your ability to bring new mobility services to new parts of your city you know so i i know you're probably it's like chris it's like finding a if you have the ability to unlock the data you have found whatever high value whatever you want to call it oil gold platinum you have found the the chest of of of wealth for the future i mean look data is is the key to all of this having the data is one thing um now you have to refine it and and get it into usable formats um because the applications we've really stuck just with mobility but the applications are much broader um and can that data can be used um for business for economic development purposes uh it could be used in so many different ways um to do other components um within an organization so it's really you know it's it's it's the hard part right now is getting the data to where you can start refining it and then telling stories with the data or information um that you have and now you know the what we're have we're seeing now is is data overload now we have edge networking and edge communication so all new data flows coming in so the challenge is really going to be you know working with the private sector to help government you know manage all these data flows and and what are the most important data flows how do we use those to help manage traffic and new mobility services um but how do we use that data in other ways to help our small businesses to help business in general to help our pedestrians stay safe to help our community grow and prosper so you really you know you you you once you find this treasure chest of of information now the heart the really the hard work comes into play finding it was hard but now how do you use this information that you have um and how to use it in the best way possible um and it's not just usable let me just give you a quick scenario wouldn't it be great to know um if you're having a concert downtown or if you want have businesses that want to know when's the best time for me maybe i should move my dinner hour you know from seven o'clock to eight o'clock because during seven o'clock it's a lot of traffic and my customers might have trouble getting to the restaurant so maybe they adjust their pricing see there's all these new things you can start thinking about from an innovative perspective demand pricing for restaurants if they had real-time traffic flow maybe there's a way they could adjust pricing um maybe they adjust deliveries um in charge you know there's all types of things that you can start doing with this either to help the community help businesses or you know what we all want was a is a better life for the community the residents that live um within the boundaries of what these systems do um but having the data is great we have lots of data it's now how do you get the right partners to help you refine it and make sense of it which is going to be the challenge you know could i um add something to chris to just this topic sorry i didn't mean to cut you off i think one thing that is um in all with all the clients that we work with in the av clients one of the important things that's coming out is the safety consciousness and the partner friendliness of of these av clients in fact in speaking one of one of the ctos i asked the question what is your number one priority it talked about at length about the safety consciousness and their number one kpi is safety and i think that that focus then leads to a way and an approach and i'm now talking about the ab players who are our clients that then leads to a number of steps both in being proactive but also building in flexibility in the mobility that allows these things to happen so i just want to make sure that in the because michael's as he should be focusing on that is so it becomes a three-way thing it becomes between um the city and the av players and data services companies or solutions companies like us because we have to really iterate across all of these these three players in terms of making the safety happen which in for each one of us the kpi number one kpi is the safety michael thoughts on that regarding uh the safety component as you're reinforcing public uh sentiments for a lot of these we've highlighted that i mean look the number one reason these technologies are here is for safety um you know we've all heard of zero fatality type you know propositions anybody who's uh lost to a traffic accident or a pedestrian fatality is unacceptable with all the technology and systems we have everybody who works on these systems it's all around safety it's about moving the needle forward and creating even safer environments and that's what the data provides the data provides a lot of that information to the manufacturers and to regulators and municipal government um you know i think a lot of people probably out there are wondering you know do we get to see the data if the if the human safety driver takes over um during uh uh event does is how is that data disseminated and shared it really depends on the event and different operations but i can tell you that in a lot of the cases where we've run autonomous vehicle programs yes that data is provided to us um so we can see depending on what the issue is it could have been a faulty traffic light data compatibility issue from sending data from an intersection to a vehicle so a lot of that information is shared we call that edge data where we're able to analyze that and and make better decisions that's again why you collect the data and so you can go back and analyze it and and try to predict future outcomes uh try to make safer roadways and try to develop just safer policies in general um because look if people don't have trust and confidence in a system whether it be a vehicle um an elevator whatever it might be people won't use it so safety you know is definitely the number one priority errata's got it you know nailed it that there is no bigger priority than safety um around the individual who's using this technology so to that point if you're bringing new mobility services to a medical district or a sports complex what's the operational and the safety data and all the kind of things that rod has described from edge case elements that have to be considered to make those types of deployments possible and michael love your thoughts initially and then rot it from your side on how you can support something of that nature so we're working on actually a medical district in our downtown area where we're putting together a autonomous vehicle i'll call it a shuttle service um for a descriptive term um you know look we we plan out where the stops are going to be based on how again data data data where are the stops going to be located well we're going to locate them based on data where people need where they conjugate from if they come out of the hospital need to go to an x-ray down the street we're going to put the stop in the safest area next to the hospital that we can and we're going to analyze all the different data that's available to find the best location for that we're going to look at traffic on the roadways number of vehicles times of day so we know what this autonomous vehicle can expect that there's a lot that goes into planning this um you know you don't just get up and start you know say oh the vehicle will stop here and without having the data and not having your use case fully laid out what is the use case for this medical district system or loop um and you need to know that who are the customers going to be that might decide what mobility technology you use do you need to have accommodations for ada and how many and how many uh instances that you think that you will need that will tell you how many vehicles may need special outfitting to be able to handle the customer load so there's a lot of data and analytics and planning less on the technology side less in my realm more in the land planning and the roadway design it's all those engineers and people like rada that that analyze and design and look at all the data my job's the fun and easy part i just get to play with the technology and see it operate um you know make sure that the proper antenna systems and data collection is there the the real hard work is a design and engineering before you launch and rada from your team's perspective how do you enable a deployment like what michael just described what would be your kind of thought process and approach and recommendations for something like that i think and um first point i would make is that you have to look at this a bit um and i i would say not a bit but holistically in that we talk about uh autonomous vehicles um more as in ground robots but if you um really look at some of the players i happen to speak to a ceo of one of the autonomous technology companies he talked about the fact that the av industry has to to aggregate data between ground aerial and also be able to supply it to like a home robot into the human being right so it is aggregating across all of this whether it's and capturing data and being able to respond very quickly multiple times a day mapping traffic patterns things like that even visual data traffic data and even accident analysis in fact i would put that pretty high there accident analysis helps us helps our clients i want to be clear that we are a facilitator helps av companies capture more edge cases so the planning part for the city and the edge case it comes back to the edge casers that can help the av companies the am companies and being able to actually create co-create the value from all of this data is is going to become very important i will re-emphasize another point that michael made earlier and i reiterated which is about this data being shared as more and of a public good so that becomes important if we want to really deliver um on the true smart city kinds of um kinds of uh um you know thinking uh that is being built into cities right now and there's been a lot of discussion about an autonomous transportation will you take drivers out of the driving process roles of humans and delivering um you know high quality data for broader autonomous mobility and at least i believe in this so passionately that human in the loop is going to be super critical for that autonomous mobility to have the best impact on cities and and i think i would um i would sort of end with that um that on that note and the our ability to skill people on an ongoing basis to be able to address that is a very important thing but looking at it across data from ground aerial and at the human la at the consumer level as well rod i'm glad you bring up the human involvement because it's a question i had for both you and for michael as we move to this autonomous future in mobility and other things um what kind of new workforce opportunities do you see from the private sector side and michael what do you see from the municipal side of how this is going to create a whole new generation of uh opportunity uh workforce enablement uh activities and things of that nature i it's gonna be it's like you're you're creating a whole new industry from the ground up and and so there's going to be a lot of new job but there's also going to be focus on present workforce you know people are forgetting that we're going to need more gis and mapping people than ever before people forget that's a skill we've had for years um but now it's going to need to be even the the standards and the specs that it's going to need to follow we're going to need more people to do gis um in our mapping take our roadways and digitize them um so that's going to go you're going to have a lot from the planning side um you're also going to need to look at a whole look we're becoming a more digitized society so understanding how all the the intersections are all going to be packed full of technology it won't be just i t departments anymore public works individuals and traffic engineers are going to need to understand not only the core job they understand today but they're going to need to understand how the technology plays a role in that um but you know it's you know from the governmental side there's a huge you know i think ron has said it really well human labor is going to shift into new realms but that's not the human is still extremely important in this whole entire scenario there is no autonomy without the programming without the mapping without the data collection without the it systems none of that works without the security all of that is human based um you may take the driver one day out of the vehicle but the human that's operating and still using the service there's still a lot of opportunity there for workforce development and growth and programming you know huge and then not even mentioning the private sector yet and all their opportunities so you know most people should be thinking about this is where do i need to be in the next three to five years what skill sets do i need how do i get engaged with my government how do i get engaged with my educational institutions where do i need to be in that to reach those new goals or to reach that new job opportunity because they are going to be there they're there now and we're moving faster into that direction and those that have the skills are building the skills today will have the skills for the future and ronnie your thoughts from your work your current workforce and your future workforce where do you see this opportunity so um one thing i would say is um you know in the covered year in this last year we created over 1100 jobs and a lot of it wasn't around autonomous mobility autonomous vehicles drones etc and michael's point about gis we're hiring several hundred gis people so it's about how do you what are the new jobs the new roles and how can we get to where we're doing a lot of validation mapping auditing these are all b-rolls and the entire way about aggregating across not just cars but across trucks drones robotics and viewing all of this as different forms of ai whether it's looking at a drone three 3d point cloud-based technologies that address drone mobility and the information you get from drones or looking so being able to aggregate across this so that we really see this as creating a lot of jobs and very importantly taking current jobs and being able to uh to skill them into the types of things we would need as autonomous mobility goes into production i still think we are in a very early stages those insights those audits that post analysis becoming a domain expert and maybe you know there will be in the future domain of experts that are regional or across different industries sports event how do you design mobility services across major sports event that could be a domain expertise because we can aggregate across multiple types of applications that we've done so all of these come together i think as each city as we look at each city and say how does autonomous mobility how do we work with the city and the av players uh to increase the safety accessibility and efficiencies how do we look at the rollout whether it's event based whether it's you know medical area we talked about or sports or entertainment or a city like new york that has so much better strength traffic and so much traffic on the roads that's very different than having a washington dc that's full of you know these circles that we go through some of the most complex things that we've worked on there's complexity in washington dc for many things but this is just one of them but this just happens to me from the gis point of view those are the kinds of things that we would look at and we are looking at actually perfect we have a few minutes for some audience questions i'm going to try to get through as many of these as i can uh so a question that just came in as vehicles drive on the roads interpreting everything in the surrounding area and logging this information do you envision uh this creating a data marketplace or data economy come on chris that's an easy one of course data is cool data is is as we talked about it's a treasure chest it's a trove now how does it work um a lot of questions in that from a government perspective i'll let rada handle hers you know do we charge for that data do we give it away i i think you know if you're asking a personal opinion here we work for the people so we should be pro government should be providing that information out there now the private market could take our data with other data from like their vehicles and other things and then package that and most likely the private sector will sell that information and data but huge opportunity a whole new economy basically around data is already there today it'll just expand um and be more and let me give you a thought to think about you know things that we're thinking about is we have a lot of vehicles that ride the that drive the streets every day for municipal purposes um to pick up trash or do whatever what if you outfitted all those vehicles with sensors and collected information on potholes and fixed assets that might be missing there's a there's a wealth of data that the city could just use on its own without marketing and or selling it or giving it out to help its own interests but imagine now that data having a car with sensors if you're a ups or fedex and you're driving almost every street or an amazon delivery what could you do who would want that data and how much would they be willing to pay for it i can tell you there's a lot of companies out there that would love to have pinpointed data and information from a trusted source like an amazon a fedex and ups and i can share with this audience they're working on that now you know don't kid yourself that those ideas and opportunities um aren't out there um and the opportunity for a whole new digital economy to form around data and just specifically roadway data huge roddy your thoughts i actually see mobility as a solution you know we always are in the technology world all the sas stuff right where incumbents disrupters innovators cities we develop platform-based mobility services and customers can tap into them i mean just think about we can source except we used to do crowdsourcing off or we still do about potholes and you know just putting that in into a marketplace well think about that think about these sensors and the crowdsourcing from them and being able to provide that to uh customers to um in in looking at the public good the quality of access the inclusion you know in many ways people trust technology when they see a human brain beside it and i think this this what we are talking about is the question is a great question by the way and looking at how you provide this as a marketplace and i think of you know all these sensors and crowdsourcing the data and saying and aggregating across it crunching across and saying okay uh driver autonomous vehicle you're approaching uh a series of three potholes and you know and you're gonna go do this so work around it or take a different path that that that those kinds of things will make mobility um as a being able to offer autonomous mobility as a solution you know like a sas solution we are running up to the end of our time i do have one last question i'm going to try to squeeze in for both of you and i'll start with you rada help me finish this sentence in 2035 data will have enabled autonomous mobility to do what in 2035 2035 yeah in 2035 data will have enabled autonomous mobility in the true sense of mobility not just vehicles but ground air ground robots radial robots home robots etc to increase safety accessibility and efficiencies in cities by a factor of multiples um use of no use of fossil fuels to transport people of things not getting lost in in route knowing learning from accidents green a world with less vehicles do you even need a car um and you know like the japanese invented just in time manufacturing uh i think we will have a just-in-time autonomous mobility services that will dramatically change our society from what it is today but it is about increasing safety accessibility and efficiencies very good michael do you have a thought on this as well i'd say be in las vegas in 2035 that's what i would tell you to do you're going to see the best technology right here so don't forget about being the 2035s happening here today so that's right you know it's going to be a brighter future more sustainable safety everything rada said she did a great job in nailing down the major points and uh michael has invited me to come and do the rides in in las vegas which we'll be doing of course to gather data to be able to look at all the edge cases and provide that to you so thank you michael all of you are welcome rod and all the listeners are welcome las vegas is open and we are excited to be back and have all of you come down and try out all the different types of transportation options and and that we have here in our beautiful city we're on our way after all the travel suppression it's time to get back on the road well thank you both it's been a great discussion very much appreciate your time thank you to techcrunch this concludes our panel session for today and any follow questions you may have please fulfill addresses on the portal on the techcrunch portal and otherwise have a good rest of your afternoon thank you chris and anybody have questions shoot it out to us they're happy to respond and great being on the panel with you michael really really enjoyed it it's my pleasure
2022-02-03 23:13