July 22, 2022 • 19 mins
VHB Hosts Dave Mulholland and Ryan Fetchko are joined by Jennifer Foote, Senior Vice President for Business Development with Beep, for the first in a two-part conversation about how cities are responding to major innovations in transportation technology by integrating autonomous vehicle infrastructure. Find out how established communities like Altamonte Springs in Florida and Yellowstone National Park are incorporating AV shuttles and technology in ways that are safe and sustainable. Stay tuned for a second conversation with Beep in an upcoming Viewpoints Podcast episode.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
(Mike Carragher)Viewpoints is VHB's thought leadership platform,
where we share insights on critical issuesand emerging technologies and the industry.
I'm Mike Carragher, president and CEO of VHB.
I’m excited to introduce VHB’sthought leaders and our client and partner
podcast participants—all future-focused thinkerswho want to reimagine the built environment.
(00:25):
I hope you’ll tune in often and leave inspired!
(Dave Mulholland)This is Dave Mulholland, VHB Chief Technology Officer, and today
I'm joined by my VHB colleague and co-hostfor today, Ryan Fetchko, a transportation technology engineer.
Hey Ryan, thanks for joining us today.
(Ryan Fetchko)Thanks for having me, Dave.
(Dave Mulholland)We're also joined by Jennifer Foote, senior vice president of business development with BP,
(00:45):
a company that provides intelligence that enables safe
eco friendly driverless mobility via autonomous vehicles.
Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us today on Viewpoints.
(Jennifer Foote)My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
(Dave Mulholland)Why don't you tell us a little bit about the and tell the audience maybe some of the history in the company overview?
(Jennifer Foote)Yeah, absolutely.
So Beep was founded in 2018
(01:08):
as a autonomous vehicle managed services company.
And what that means is we take our portfolio of services
from planning to deployment to operations
and wrap that around the delivery of autonomous vehicles
from any number of suppliers around the states or the
(01:29):
or the world as far as that goes, be deployed.
Our flagship deployment in Lake Nona,
a suburb of Orlando back in September 2019.
We started on a one mile route with two shuttles
and since then we've deployed six routes, ten shuttles.
(01:51):
We've transported over 40,000 passengers on that route.
We've also deployed in states like Georgia, Arizona, Wyoming.
We had a wildly successful trial in the summer
at Yellowstone National Parkwhere we transported 100,000 passengers.
(Dave Mulholland)Well, that's, that is exciting.
(02:11):
So how, how did, how did you get into this?
What actually attracted you to get into the autonomous vehicle?
World?
(Jennifer Foote)Well, it's, it's an interesting story, I guess, interesting to me.
So I started my career in technology.
I was at a program manager
managing global transformation programs, using technology
(02:35):
as a forcing function for training for transformation and in that
career, I worked for a group of technology entrepreneurs
who sold their company
and retired and started looking for a new venture.
In the course of that, they discovered autonomous vehicles,
(02:55):
and they realized that there was a huge gapin the autonomous vehicle industry.
We have all of this great innovation,all of these great suppliers.
The brilliant minds here are bringing the technology to bear,but nobody really knew how to consume it.
And so they formed feet to fill that gap,
to really make it easy for cities,
(03:18):
states, even federal agencies to consume those services.
So when they formed the company, they pulled togethera few key resources from their former venture.
I happened to be one of them.
And for me, the idea of bringing
technology that can really change the world
provide a greener transportation solution
(03:41):
as well as a safer mode of transportation
was really appealing to the humanitarian in me.
(Dave Mulholland)Well, on behalf of VHB, we certainly appreciate the partnership with you and the relationship.
And I know you've had the opportunity to work with my co-hostand I'm going to turn to you a little bit now, Ryan.
So maybe talk a little bit about what drove you to get intothe technology space and really maybe some of the things
(04:04):
that you're doing with BP as well, because I know there'sa strong relationship between the HP and BEEP.
(Ryan Fetchko)Absolutely.
So myself, I grew in a space
out of just pure curiosityunderstanding of how we can do things better.
And I think that was the engineer in me asking me, you know,there's got to be a better solution.
(04:24):
There's got to be something better than what we have now.
And we started looking at the advancementsthat we're making with autonomy.
And in 2014 we started to see the rollout
of really the first conglomeration here in Florida
with the Florida Automated Vehicle Conference kicking off.
And from thereit's just been this whirlwind of efforts across the nation.
(04:46):
Seeing this technology light up, being integrated into passenger
vehicles, being integrated into transit vehicles, heavy,
heavy freight vehicles, construction equipment, even. And
it's endless what we can do
with this technology,the possibilities, you know, the sky's the limit.
And along with that, we developed
a nice partnership with Beat where we're generally looking at how
(05:10):
we can enable this technology to be on the ground sooner.
And easier for not only our municipal clients,but our private clients and looking at ways
that we can start integrating the different aspectsthat interconnect with this technology
so that's that's in a nutshell kind of where I beenand what I'm doing and going forward and in the future,
(05:31):
starting to look at the different ways that this affects
the other new concepts that are coming out inside of engineering.
(Dave Mulholland)I was interested also in hearing a little bit more
about the Yellowstone projectbecause that actually is a pretty interesting project in itself
with the the implementation lake known as Jacksonville, PortSaint Lucie, Arizona.
(05:53):
I mean, there's a lot of areasthat BP is implementing the the autonomous shuttle,
which one was probably the most challenging of the implementationsand maybe maybe for the audience.
Why, you know, as there's a curiosityin terms of the implementation challenges on this.
(Jennifer Foote)Yeah, absolutely.
So I will say that Yellowstone was the most challenging.
(06:14):
It's the first of its kind deploymentin a remote location in a National Park Service
One of the things that I think
is important for folks to know about the technologyis it's it's emerging,
it's learning and getting smarter.
And it connects via the cellular network.
(06:35):
So the the more remote you are,
the more effort you have to put into place to ensure
that you've got good connected video to enable the vehicles.
And so that was one of the challenges the vehicles also react to.
They do what they're supposed to do.
They're supposed to see obstacles quicker than humans couldand react to those.
(06:58):
And so there are bison and bearsand all sorts of interesting obstacles
that we had to anticipateand be prepared to deal with out in Yellowstone.
And the the the deployment,
the weather was another interesting challenge.
The vehicles, because of the sensitivity of the technology,
(07:21):
the sensors will detect very large snowflakes
as at as a potential obstacle.
And so they'll slow down until they have time to process that.
It's not actually a threat.
So we weren't able to run the shuttles in in timeswhen heavy snow is falling,
but we were able to prove some interesting concepts
(07:42):
and so one of the things that we're doing at beefis making sure that
we're able to support a V in a fully autonomous function.
A lot of people don't recognize right nowthat even though the vehicles are capable of full autonomy,
we still have a safety attendant on board.
And there are a couple of reasons for that.
(08:03):
But one of those is the vehicles haven't yet
learned to anticipate every single potential scenario.
They may come in contact with.
So they may encounter a vehicle stopped in the middle of the road,
in front of the front of them, broken down,and the vehicle doesn't know how to navigate that just yet.
(08:23):
And so a safety attendant is on boardto navigate around an obstacle like that.
But we're laying the foundation such that we can take those safety
attendants off the shuttleand have remote hands in our global command center.
So we were able to prove that conceptthrough the Yellowstone deployment.
(08:43):
Even as far away from Orlando as Yellowstone National Park is,
we had our command center staff in Orlando
providing remote support to those onboard safety attendanceand recognizing that
that once we're able to get those attendants off board,
the command center will be fully functional and ready to do that.
(09:06):
(Ryan Fetchko)That's absolutely fascinating to hear that you're able
to take something that's so reliant on modern communication
and put it in a place that is interestingly designed
to not have communications in placeto preserve the wilderness of the area.
And have it operate fully, functionally as well.
As, you know, I wish I could have been out there to see itand made it out there.
(09:28):
I do wish Yellowstone is on my bucket list
but to see it in operations
and ride it out there, I've heard it in Lake Down,and it's a fantastic operation.
I can only imagine how it blend in with the wildernessand being a fully electric vehicle.
It absolutely points to a point of preservationthat we need to have.
(Jennifer Foote)We and, you know, one of the things that we measure through
(09:51):
all of our projects is the percent of autonomous operations.
And we ran a very high percent of autonomy
up in the 90 to 95% range and typically,
you know that five to 10% would be those scenarios where
we might be crossing an intersection and the attendant
just has to allow the vehicle to stop and press go to,
(10:14):
to allow the vehicle to continue its mission
across the intersection when it's safe to do so.
(Ryan Fetchko)That's excellent.
(Dave Mulholland)So it's exciting, like Ryan said, to see how the advancement
of the learning part of the vehicle and the in the next stepand where the vehicles are going.
So you reference weather and specifically snow.
How long do you think it's going to take beforeyou're going to be fully
(10:37):
prepared to address the the inclement weather's out there?
And I said weather's because there's different ranges,whether it's rain, sleet, snow
as part of the vehiclesin terms of the reliable side of the service.
(Jennifer Foote)Yeah, that's a great question.
I mean, weather is always somethingthat our clients are asking about.
And one of the things that we know as an industrywe need to tackle,
(10:58):
I think two things are going to have to happento make that possible.
One, we're going to have to have some higher fidelity light are
that are that is available at a reasonable price
so that we're able to continue to commercialize the solution.
A higher fidelity Lider will be able
to more discretely determine what it's doing.
(11:23):
And then we're also going to have to havesome more advanced machine learning
and so that the vehicle can recognize the difference
between a snowflake and a leaf and a bison or a bear
and so so having that ability to to make distinctionsand to determine
real timeor through some form of algorithm from a previous machine
(11:47):
learning activity,and that it's not a real threat that it's observing.
(Dave Mulholland)How does the vehicle stop when you're inside the vehicle?
(Jennifer Foote)It depends really it depends on how far away
the vehicle is when an object is perceived.
And so you know, we want the vehicle to stop to avoid a collision.
(12:11):
So let's say you have a vehicle that cut
that is merging into a lane in front of the shuttleand it's 15 feet away.
So it comes around in the laneand it wants to merge and in front of the shuttle.
And so that it can take its next turn
if it cuts in a little close,maybe 15 feet away, that the shuttle will sense that.
(12:34):
And it may slow down for just a quick second to recognize, hey,there's something in front of me.
Oh, it's a car, it's moving ahead.
It's not really blocking my path.
If it recognizes us
and perceives that there is an obstacle,a stationary obstacle in front of it,
it's going to stop quickly enough to avoid that collision.
(12:55):
And injury to a pedestrian in front of it.
The thing that bit does a little bit differently,I think, than some of the other operators
when we started our operation, we looked at all of the vehiclesolutions that were available to us,
and we choose to engage only with suppliers
to provide restraint systems for our passengers.
(13:18):
So all of our passengers are seated and belted in,
and we don't allow passengers to stand in the vehicles right now.
And for that very reason,we want to make sure we're providing a safe
and pleasant experience inside and outside the vehicle.
(Dave Mulholland)How many how many passengers are traducing on the vehicle
(13:39):
that you're servicing and how many vehicles
how many vehicles did you have in that Yellowstone
rollout? With a hundred thousand?
Cause that's a lot of people.
(Jennifer Foote)10,000 people. So we had 10,000.
Yes, we had two vehicles in Yellowstone.
One, the capacity of each vehicle was eight passengers.
And over the course of about 90 days,we transported 10,000 people.
(14:03):
And so we had one shuttle running at any given point in time.
They ran in shifts and they were packed to the brim for every trip
in Lake Nona, same
we have a couple of different shuttlesrunning in Lake Nona and we have passenger
capacity of eight to ten passengers per vehicle.
(14:24):
(Dave Mulholland)Is there any, is there any plans from BP
or the manufacturersthey are working with to actually go with a larger vehicle
to maybe supplementsome of the BRT systems or traditional bus services?
(Jennifer Foote)Yeah, actually we're talking to suppliers
all over the world about what our customer feedback is.
We want to have the voice of the customer ringing throughand every interaction that we have with our customers.
(14:48):
And a lot of them are asking for a larger form factor.
And we we've heard and believe that sweet spot
is probably somewhere between 16 and 20.
But I do think it depends on the areathat you're deploying to, right?
So we want to rightsize the deploymentand the solution to fit what the demand is going to be.
(15:09):
(Ryan Fetchko)I want to turn out for just a second here and talk about one of the vehicles you got, because to me
it's absolutely fascinating the processand development of this vehicle.
So the only buy local motors
is a completely the frame of the vehicle is completely 3D.
Print it.
Yes, and in fact, they have one ofI believe at the time it was developed
one of the largest 3Dprinting systems for vehicles in the world.
(15:34):
Yes. Made in the USA. It's a fantastic vehicle.
And if you ever have the chance to walk up on one,you can actually see that it's 3D printed.
And I believe to my knowledge, it's the only vehicle that they've
actually run through crash testing at full speed
and performed admirably for what it is
protecting what it had to for the requirementswhich to me was absolutely fascinating.
(15:56):
But to see the vehicle being able to produce,I think what they can produce the vehicle
in a relatively short amount of time.
I forgot the exact hours, but I thought it was less than a daythey can print the entire vehicle, right?
(Jennifer Foote)The production cycle for a vehicle, the entire production cycle is about a week.
And it's it's really a fascinating process.
I was able to go up to Knoxvillewhere they manufacture those vehicles just a few few months ago,
(16:20):
and I can stand up and have lots of room inside that 3D printer.
It's an amazing it's an amazing process.
And so they yeah, production cycle about a week
and it is
it is quite fascinatingthe way they've been able to engineer that vehicle.
And they even, you know, along the lines
(16:40):
of sustainability as well, they don't waste anything.
So, you know, they're able to recycle even the polymers
that are left over from a printing cycle,
they just recycle thoseand put it into the next vehicle that they produce.
And so again, one of the things I'm most passionate aboutis saving lives and saving our planet.
(17:01):
And every phase along the way, the technology
that we're talking about plays a role in doing things like that.
(Ryan Fetchko)I think it's also important to highlight that beef as an operator is agnostic to the technology.
(Jennifer Foote)Absolutely.
(Ryan Fetchko)So you guys use several different platforms to operate.
It's kind of like you guys work to findwhat is the best shoe that fits the scenario.
(17:23):
To implement that scenario in place.
(Jennifer Foote)Exactly. Exactly.
That,you know, the technologies that are out in the market right now
are very similar, but there are a few nuances
that can make them more appropriate for one use case over another.
And so we really are looking for the best of breedin terms of solutions out there
(17:43):
so that we can fit what our customersare really looking to achieve.
(Ryan Fetchko)I think it's an excellent approach.
It allows kind of the options to be more dynamic
in terms of fitting the solution.
And it's something that I thinkis going to be relatively important going forward
as we start looking at how this technologyis going to be intertwining inside of our communities.
Whether they're already pre builtand we're retrofitting our streets and roadways in the future
(18:07):
for autonomy or, you know, we're looking at new communitiesthat are being constructed around the idea of autonomy.
(Dave Mulholland)Thanks for cohosting with me today.
Ryan. Jennifer, I really appreciate you being here with us today.
So our listeners can learn more about Beepand operating an autonomous vehicle in our communities.
And thanks to you, the listeners, for tuning in today.
(18:27):
Our conversation with Jennifer is not over.
We will be digging into autonomous vehicle infrastructure
and the operational design domain in a future episode with BEEP.
I hope you will join us for more from Viewpointspodcast about technology
and the data informed ideasmaking our world more sustainable, equitable and resilient.
(Mike Carragher)Viewpoints is VHB's thought leadership platform,
where we share insights on critical issuesand emerging technologies and the industry.
I'm Mike Carragher, president and CEO of VHB.
I’m excited to introduce VHB’sthought leaders and our client and partner
podcast participants—all future-focused thinkerswho want to reimagine the built environment.
(00:25):
I hope you’ll tune in often and leave inspired!
(Dave Mulholland)This is Dave Mulholland, VHB Chief Technology Officer, and today
I'm joined by my VHB colleague and co-hostfor today, Ryan Fetchko, a transportation technology engineer.
Hey Ryan, thanks for joining us today.
(Ryan Fetchko)Thanks for having me, Dave.
(Dave Mulholland)We're also joined by Jennifer Foote, senior vice president of business development with BP,
(00:45):
a company that provides intelligence that enables safe
eco friendly driverless mobility via autonomous vehicles.
Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us today on Viewpoints.
(Jennifer Foote)My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
(Dave Mulholland)Why don't you tell us a little bit about the and tell the audience maybe some of the history in the company overview?
(Jennifer Foote)Yeah, absolutely.
So Beep was founded in 2018
(01:08):
as a autonomous vehicle managed services company.
And what that means is we take our portfolio of services
from planning to deployment to operations
and wrap that around the delivery of autonomous vehicles
from any number of suppliers around the states or the
(01:29):
or the world as far as that goes, be deployed.
Our flagship deployment in Lake Nona,
a suburb of Orlando back in September 2019.
We started on a one mile route with two shuttles
and since then we've deployed six routes, ten shuttles.
(01:51):
We've transported over 40,000 passengers on that route.
We've also deployed in states like Georgia, Arizona, Wyoming.
We had a wildly successful trial in the summer
at Yellowstone National Parkwhere we transported 100,000 passengers.
(Dave Mulholland)Well, that's, that is exciting.
(02:11):
So how, how did, how did you get into this?
What actually attracted you to get into the autonomous vehicle?
World?
(Jennifer Foote)Well, it's, it's an interesting story, I guess, interesting to me.
So I started my career in technology.
I was at a program manager
managing global transformation programs, using technology
(02:35):
as a forcing function for training for transformation and in that
career, I worked for a group of technology entrepreneurs
who sold their company
and retired and started looking for a new venture.
In the course of that, they discovered autonomous vehicles,
(02:55):
and they realized that there was a huge gapin the autonomous vehicle industry.
We have all of this great innovation,all of these great suppliers.
The brilliant minds here are bringing the technology to bear,but nobody really knew how to consume it.
And so they formed feet to fill that gap,
to really make it easy for cities,
(03:18):
states, even federal agencies to consume those services.
So when they formed the company, they pulled togethera few key resources from their former venture.
I happened to be one of them.
And for me, the idea of bringing
technology that can really change the world
provide a greener transportation solution
(03:41):
as well as a safer mode of transportation
was really appealing to the humanitarian in me.
(Dave Mulholland)Well, on behalf of VHB, we certainly appreciate the partnership with you and the relationship.
And I know you've had the opportunity to work with my co-hostand I'm going to turn to you a little bit now, Ryan.
So maybe talk a little bit about what drove you to get intothe technology space and really maybe some of the things
(04:04):
that you're doing with BP as well, because I know there'sa strong relationship between the HP and BEEP.
(Ryan Fetchko)Absolutely.
So myself, I grew in a space
out of just pure curiosityunderstanding of how we can do things better.
And I think that was the engineer in me asking me, you know,there's got to be a better solution.
(04:24):
There's got to be something better than what we have now.
And we started looking at the advancementsthat we're making with autonomy.
And in 2014 we started to see the rollout
of really the first conglomeration here in Florida
with the Florida Automated Vehicle Conference kicking off.
And from thereit's just been this whirlwind of efforts across the nation.
(04:46):
Seeing this technology light up, being integrated into passenger
vehicles, being integrated into transit vehicles, heavy,
heavy freight vehicles, construction equipment, even. And
it's endless what we can do
with this technology,the possibilities, you know, the sky's the limit.
And along with that, we developed
a nice partnership with Beat where we're generally looking at how
(05:10):
we can enable this technology to be on the ground sooner.
And easier for not only our municipal clients,but our private clients and looking at ways
that we can start integrating the different aspectsthat interconnect with this technology
so that's that's in a nutshell kind of where I beenand what I'm doing and going forward and in the future,
(05:31):
starting to look at the different ways that this affects
the other new concepts that are coming out inside of engineering.
(Dave Mulholland)I was interested also in hearing a little bit more
about the Yellowstone projectbecause that actually is a pretty interesting project in itself
with the the implementation lake known as Jacksonville, PortSaint Lucie, Arizona.
(05:53):
I mean, there's a lot of areasthat BP is implementing the the autonomous shuttle,
which one was probably the most challenging of the implementationsand maybe maybe for the audience.
Why, you know, as there's a curiosityin terms of the implementation challenges on this.
(Jennifer Foote)Yeah, absolutely.
So I will say that Yellowstone was the most challenging.
(06:14):
It's the first of its kind deploymentin a remote location in a National Park Service
One of the things that I think
is important for folks to know about the technologyis it's it's emerging,
it's learning and getting smarter.
And it connects via the cellular network.
(06:35):
So the the more remote you are,
the more effort you have to put into place to ensure
that you've got good connected video to enable the vehicles.
And so that was one of the challenges the vehicles also react to.
They do what they're supposed to do.
They're supposed to see obstacles quicker than humans couldand react to those.
(06:58):
And so there are bison and bearsand all sorts of interesting obstacles
that we had to anticipateand be prepared to deal with out in Yellowstone.
And the the the deployment,
the weather was another interesting challenge.
The vehicles, because of the sensitivity of the technology,
(07:21):
the sensors will detect very large snowflakes
as at as a potential obstacle.
And so they'll slow down until they have time to process that.
It's not actually a threat.
So we weren't able to run the shuttles in in timeswhen heavy snow is falling,
but we were able to prove some interesting concepts
(07:42):
and so one of the things that we're doing at beefis making sure that
we're able to support a V in a fully autonomous function.
A lot of people don't recognize right nowthat even though the vehicles are capable of full autonomy,
we still have a safety attendant on board.
And there are a couple of reasons for that.
(08:03):
But one of those is the vehicles haven't yet
learned to anticipate every single potential scenario.
They may come in contact with.
So they may encounter a vehicle stopped in the middle of the road,
in front of the front of them, broken down,and the vehicle doesn't know how to navigate that just yet.
(08:23):
And so a safety attendant is on boardto navigate around an obstacle like that.
But we're laying the foundation such that we can take those safety
attendants off the shuttleand have remote hands in our global command center.
So we were able to prove that conceptthrough the Yellowstone deployment.
(08:43):
Even as far away from Orlando as Yellowstone National Park is,
we had our command center staff in Orlando
providing remote support to those onboard safety attendanceand recognizing that
that once we're able to get those attendants off board,
the command center will be fully functional and ready to do that.
(09:06):
(Ryan Fetchko)That's absolutely fascinating to hear that you're able
to take something that's so reliant on modern communication
and put it in a place that is interestingly designed
to not have communications in placeto preserve the wilderness of the area.
And have it operate fully, functionally as well.
As, you know, I wish I could have been out there to see itand made it out there.
(09:28):
I do wish Yellowstone is on my bucket list
but to see it in operations
and ride it out there, I've heard it in Lake Down,and it's a fantastic operation.
I can only imagine how it blend in with the wildernessand being a fully electric vehicle.
It absolutely points to a point of preservationthat we need to have.
(Jennifer Foote)We and, you know, one of the things that we measure through
(09:51):
all of our projects is the percent of autonomous operations.
And we ran a very high percent of autonomy
up in the 90 to 95% range and typically,
you know that five to 10% would be those scenarios where
we might be crossing an intersection and the attendant
just has to allow the vehicle to stop and press go to,
(10:14):
to allow the vehicle to continue its mission
across the intersection when it's safe to do so.
(Ryan Fetchko)That's excellent.
(Dave Mulholland)So it's exciting, like Ryan said, to see how the advancement
of the learning part of the vehicle and the in the next stepand where the vehicles are going.
So you reference weather and specifically snow.
How long do you think it's going to take beforeyou're going to be fully
(10:37):
prepared to address the the inclement weather's out there?
And I said weather's because there's different ranges,whether it's rain, sleet, snow
as part of the vehiclesin terms of the reliable side of the service.
(Jennifer Foote)Yeah, that's a great question.
I mean, weather is always somethingthat our clients are asking about.
And one of the things that we know as an industrywe need to tackle,
(10:58):
I think two things are going to have to happento make that possible.
One, we're going to have to have some higher fidelity light are
that are that is available at a reasonable price
so that we're able to continue to commercialize the solution.
A higher fidelity Lider will be able
to more discretely determine what it's doing.
(11:23):
And then we're also going to have to havesome more advanced machine learning
and so that the vehicle can recognize the difference
between a snowflake and a leaf and a bison or a bear
and so so having that ability to to make distinctionsand to determine
real timeor through some form of algorithm from a previous machine
(11:47):
learning activity,and that it's not a real threat that it's observing.
(Dave Mulholland)How does the vehicle stop when you're inside the vehicle?
(Jennifer Foote)It depends really it depends on how far away
the vehicle is when an object is perceived.
And so you know, we want the vehicle to stop to avoid a collision.
(12:11):
So let's say you have a vehicle that cut
that is merging into a lane in front of the shuttleand it's 15 feet away.
So it comes around in the laneand it wants to merge and in front of the shuttle.
And so that it can take its next turn
if it cuts in a little close,maybe 15 feet away, that the shuttle will sense that.
(12:34):
And it may slow down for just a quick second to recognize, hey,there's something in front of me.
Oh, it's a car, it's moving ahead.
It's not really blocking my path.
If it recognizes us
and perceives that there is an obstacle,a stationary obstacle in front of it,
it's going to stop quickly enough to avoid that collision.
(12:55):
And injury to a pedestrian in front of it.
The thing that bit does a little bit differently,I think, than some of the other operators
when we started our operation, we looked at all of the vehiclesolutions that were available to us,
and we choose to engage only with suppliers
to provide restraint systems for our passengers.
(13:18):
So all of our passengers are seated and belted in,
and we don't allow passengers to stand in the vehicles right now.
And for that very reason,we want to make sure we're providing a safe
and pleasant experience inside and outside the vehicle.
(Dave Mulholland)How many how many passengers are traducing on the vehicle
(13:39):
that you're servicing and how many vehicles
how many vehicles did you have in that Yellowstone
rollout? With a hundred thousand?
Cause that's a lot of people.
(Jennifer Foote)10,000 people. So we had 10,000.
Yes, we had two vehicles in Yellowstone.
One, the capacity of each vehicle was eight passengers.
And over the course of about 90 days,we transported 10,000 people.
(14:03):
And so we had one shuttle running at any given point in time.
They ran in shifts and they were packed to the brim for every trip
in Lake Nona, same
we have a couple of different shuttlesrunning in Lake Nona and we have passenger
capacity of eight to ten passengers per vehicle.
(14:24):
(Dave Mulholland)Is there any, is there any plans from BP
or the manufacturersthey are working with to actually go with a larger vehicle
to maybe supplementsome of the BRT systems or traditional bus services?
(Jennifer Foote)Yeah, actually we're talking to suppliers
all over the world about what our customer feedback is.
We want to have the voice of the customer ringing throughand every interaction that we have with our customers.
(14:48):
And a lot of them are asking for a larger form factor.
And we we've heard and believe that sweet spot
is probably somewhere between 16 and 20.
But I do think it depends on the areathat you're deploying to, right?
So we want to rightsize the deploymentand the solution to fit what the demand is going to be.
(15:09):
(Ryan Fetchko)I want to turn out for just a second here and talk about one of the vehicles you got, because to me
it's absolutely fascinating the processand development of this vehicle.
So the only buy local motors
is a completely the frame of the vehicle is completely 3D.
Print it.
Yes, and in fact, they have one ofI believe at the time it was developed
one of the largest 3Dprinting systems for vehicles in the world.
(15:34):
Yes. Made in the USA. It's a fantastic vehicle.
And if you ever have the chance to walk up on one,you can actually see that it's 3D printed.
And I believe to my knowledge, it's the only vehicle that they've
actually run through crash testing at full speed
and performed admirably for what it is
protecting what it had to for the requirementswhich to me was absolutely fascinating.
(15:56):
But to see the vehicle being able to produce,I think what they can produce the vehicle
in a relatively short amount of time.
I forgot the exact hours, but I thought it was less than a daythey can print the entire vehicle, right?
(Jennifer Foote)The production cycle for a vehicle, the entire production cycle is about a week.
And it's it's really a fascinating process.
I was able to go up to Knoxvillewhere they manufacture those vehicles just a few few months ago,
(16:20):
and I can stand up and have lots of room inside that 3D printer.
It's an amazing it's an amazing process.
And so they yeah, production cycle about a week
and it is
it is quite fascinatingthe way they've been able to engineer that vehicle.
And they even, you know, along the lines
(16:40):
of sustainability as well, they don't waste anything.
So, you know, they're able to recycle even the polymers
that are left over from a printing cycle,
they just recycle thoseand put it into the next vehicle that they produce.
And so again, one of the things I'm most passionate aboutis saving lives and saving our planet.
(17:01):
And every phase along the way, the technology
that we're talking about plays a role in doing things like that.
(Ryan Fetchko)I think it's also important to highlight that beef as an operator is agnostic to the technology.
(Jennifer Foote)Absolutely.
(Ryan Fetchko)So you guys use several different platforms to operate.
It's kind of like you guys work to findwhat is the best shoe that fits the scenario.
(17:23):
To implement that scenario in place.
(Jennifer Foote)Exactly. Exactly.
That,you know, the technologies that are out in the market right now
are very similar, but there are a few nuances
that can make them more appropriate for one use case over another.
And so we really are looking for the best of breedin terms of solutions out there
(17:43):
so that we can fit what our customersare really looking to achieve.
(Ryan Fetchko)I think it's an excellent approach.
It allows kind of the options to be more dynamic
in terms of fitting the solution.
And it's something that I thinkis going to be relatively important going forward
as we start looking at how this technologyis going to be intertwining inside of our communities.
Whether they're already pre builtand we're retrofitting our streets and roadways in the future
(18:07):
for autonomy or, you know, we're looking at new communitiesthat are being constructed around the idea of autonomy.
(Dave Mulholland)Thanks for cohosting with me today.
Ryan. Jennifer, I really appreciate you being here with us today.
So our listeners can learn more about Beepand operating an autonomous vehicle in our communities.
And thanks to you, the listeners, for tuning in today.
(18:27):
Our conversation with Jennifer is not over.
We will be digging into autonomous vehicle infrastructure
and the operational design domain in a future episode with BEEP.
I hope you will join us for more from Viewpointspodcast about technology
and the data informed ideasmaking our world more sustainable, equitable and resilient.
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