Road trip…Florida’s very warm welcome
Lake Nona is a 17 square mile planned community south of Orlando, Florida which launched an autonomous vehicle program in September 2019. The initial route is 1.2 miles with three stops connecting Lake Nona Town Center Boxi Park, the Pixon Apartments, and The Laureate Park neighborhood village center. The service currently runs seven days a week with extended hours during the weekends to accommodate passenger service demand. Multiple additional routes are being deployed this summer making Lake Nona one of the largest autonomous fleets in the world servicing a single community.
TLB Route Lake Nona
As such, it is one of the most robust Autonomous Vehicle (AV) solutions in the world, and its success has led to a $20 Million BUILD grant from the US Department of Transportation. This grant will help expand the network and also include a full-service mobility hub, linear park, linear park bridge, infrastructure for autonomous vehicles (AV), and a bicycle transportation network. Expansion of the autonomous network and infrastructure will create more than 25 miles of multimodal paths. A private company, Beep, founded by information technology veterans is driving the Lake Nona program.
Disclosure: Beep, the author and Florida Polytechnic University are in discussions on partnerships around developing an innovation lab connected to the BUILD grant.
Beep Shuttle
Who and What is Beep ?
Beep was founded by a group of seasoned technology entrepreneurs who have found success entering markets ahead of a technology inflection in information technology. As a business, Beep specializes in the planning, deployment, and safe operation of multi-passenger autonomous vehicles.
“Beep offers a turnkey mobility solution, typically acquired as a subscription service, with provisions to manage the entire life cycle of an AV deployment from project inception to regulatory approvals and ongoing operations. Beep is a supplier of multiple vehicle platforms, with active projects across multiple AV technology vendors,” says Joe Moye, CEO of Beep.
What makes Beep Interesting ?
In the space of public transportation, the primary operators are public agencies who have a great deal of expertise in the current non AV use-models. However, there is a very large gap in understanding the unique challenges and possibilities of modern autonomous technology. Major cities such as Jacksonville and Singapore have recognized this gap and taken actions to fill this gap with direct investments. However, most public agencies do not have the resources, time, nor expertise to invest in these expensive and unique resources(sensors and machine learning).
Table 1: AV Shuttle Makers
Meanwhile, AV shuttle vendors (Table 1) are furiously trying to build solutions which provide the required capabilities with robustness. Given the state of AV technologies, this is a non-trivial task, and they do not have the capabilities to offer solutions for the operational elements of a public transportation service. With this gap, there is an opportunity for AV operating services with capabilities in areas such as AV vendor qualification, regulator management, and AV operations.
AV Vendor Qualification: Given the state of AV technology, both the vendor and agencies can profit from a partner to bridge the gaps.
“The current state of the AV technology market does not support the rapid deployment of generalized solutions. Each platform is unique in its own way, with specific strengths and oftentimes non obvious quirks, and each deployment (or ODD) often provides its own challenges. Ensuring we have a deep understanding of each platform’s limitations, as well as where the vendor may be able to address specific challenges has been essential towards ensuring a safe, reliable, and high quality experience for our passenger,” says Clayton Tino, CTO at Beep.
Regulator Management: Given the state of AV technology, gaining regulatory approval for operations can be a challenge for an agency as well as the regulator. From a regulator point-of-view, gaining access to knowledgeable resources which optimize bandwidth of the agency staff is critical. Meanwhile, for the agency, an operating partner with the expertise to work with the regulator is also very useful. Beep was recently invited by US DOT as the only non-manufacturing partner to the AV Test Initiative.
AV Operational Services: Beyond the technology and regulator management, there is a need for operational management of the AV shuttles. The sensor and machine learning technologies impose a new class of challenges for real-time operation as well as maintenance.
Much like value added service companies in areas such as information technology or financial services, the appearance of AV operating value added services is a good sign relative to the maturity of the AV industry.
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