TechStuffIn this episode, we delve into the groundbreaking technology behind autonomous driving vehicles in Lake Nona, a living lab community in Orlando, Florida, America's first smart town. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of Beep, the organization powering a transformative mobility solution operating in Lake Nona. Beep CEO Joe Moye joins Graeme and Tavistock Senior Vice President Juan Santos, to discuss how artificial intelligence has revolutionized transportation within the Lake Nona project. Discover how these visionary leaders have united to make communities safer, smarter, and more sustainable through AI integration. Get ready to be inspired by the innovative strides being taken to create a more connected and secure future on the roads of Lake Nona.
Learn more about how Intel is leading the charge in the AI Revolution at Intel.com/stories
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This is Jonathan Strickland, executive producer at iHeart Podcasts, and what I have for you today is an episode of a new podcast we launched earlier this year in partnership with Intel. The show is called Technically Speaking, an Intel Podcast, and it focuses on all things artificial intelligence. Now, y'all have heard me talk about AI tons of times on tech Stuff, and I'm sure you've got a pretty good handle on my general thoughts and opinions about artificial intelligence. But that's not to say that my point of view is the only one, or heaven knows, it's not necessarily the correct one, or anything like that. This show features hosts Graham Class exploring bleeding edge implementations of AI and how AI is making incredible changes in the way we do different types of work and how it can help people in various ways. And he has conversations with pioneers and innovators in the space. So check out this episode and to hear more, make sure you subscribe to Technically Speaking and Intel podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts enjoy.
Where do world changing ideas get their start at Intel. It starts with real solutions, and real solutions start with exceptional engineering, the quantum computing revolution, the next generation of AI experts, the renewable energy grid, liquid cooling, data centers, early diagnosis for cancer, water restoration, and even farmland protection. The examples are countless, the impacts are endless, but the foundation is always the same. It starts with Intel. Join us in redefining what's achievable through the power of AI. Learn more at Intel dot com slash stories. Welcome to Lake Nona, a beautiful residential and commercial oasis where the future has arrived. Lake Nona is a seventeen square mile community in Orlando, Florida that has established new standards of living that integrate the latest technology into every facet of life, including, but not limited to the way its citizens get around. Picture this. A person stands in the warm Florida sun at a designated bus stop, waiting for the next shuttle to arrive. And here it comes, not with the roar of an engine, but with the gentle hum of an energy efficient electric mona. The busk glides to a halt, and as the doors open, something is missing. There's no one in the driver's seat. That's because Lake Nona is home to one of the country's largest and longest running single site autonomous vehicle fleets. These energy efficient, self driving buses have transformed the way residents travel in this community, say and easily accessible. They whisk people from place to place, freeing hands, reducing traffic congestion, and embracing a sustainable future. What else can a world of autonomous public transportation do? How else may impact the way a community operates in this bright and sunny corner of the world. The horizon is limitless and our journey is full of possibilities. Hey there, I'm Grain Class and this is technically speaking an Intel podcast. The show is dedicated to highlighting technology is revolutionizing the way we live, work, and move. In every episode, we'll connect with innovators in areas like artificial intelligence to better understand the human centered technology they've developed. Thus far, we've explored how AI impacts society in the ways of agriculture, accessibility, and mental health. But one of the ways technology and especially artificial intelligence impact society is through its structures. AI is advancing the way cities are able to serve their citizens. There's a very interesting example of this happening in a small town in the United States. But before we go any further, I need to introduce my guests. Joining me now is Joey Morow, the CEO of BEEP, which is a company that offers autonomous mobility solutions in public and private communities across the US. His career has spanned the technology arena, from hardware and software to IT services. He has spearheaded groundbreaking enterprise projects in cutting edge startups to multi billion dollar enterprises. Joe's expertise in innovation, strategy and transformative technologies paved the way for his role at BEEP, where he now leads a new team transforming mobility as we know it. We are so excited to have you on, Joe.
Thank you, Graham, glad to be here.
Also joining us as Juan Santos, the senior vice president of Brand Experience and Innovation at Tavas Group. At table Stock, He's part of a multi disciplinary team that uses design thinking to build places where people can thrive. One is a recognized expert in design thinking, user generated content, virtual worlds, physical and digital, and loyalty and rewards.
Welcome to the chop one.
Thank you very much.
Green, I'll start with you, Joe, Can you just tell us a little bit more about Beep and in particular your personal story around why you decided to get involved with the company.
Yeah, I'm happy to Graham, and thanks again for having us. So Beep was founded on the premise that autonomous mobility is going to be proven out in i'll see incremental use cases. I know everybody has had different experiences and or has read a little bit about what driving and mobility is about. You know, I would tell you if you think of the technologies and the work that we're doing, it's very focused on on shorthaul first mile last mile type use cases in public and private communities, solving for that micro transit gap across many areas of our country. Second is very important that it's a shared platform, so we focus on more controlled speed, GEO fenced use cases, but in a shared mobility form factor, meaning a shuttle that seats a ten to twelve passengers and really represents that ability to provide a good balance of yes, personal mobility, but also community mobility. So the business was founded by a group of us that are also investors in the company. We've been entrepreneurs across a couple of funds, so we're venture capitalists as well as operators. And again, as we looked at this key inflection point in the area of technology specific to autonomy, made a very calculated approach to focusing on this micro segment of the larger market of autono enemy around this electric shared autonomous mobility in these micro transit use cases.
BEEP is a turnkey mobility solution with the goal of providing stress free transportation, reducing carbon emissions, and improving road safety. Offering autonomous transportation to thousands of people, beep's technology focuses on community and offers localized travel solutions that reflect the way people want to engage with their neighborhood. Are these vehicles going to be driver lists or driver assisted? How is that currently being played out?
Yeah, it's a great question. We work in partnership with the US Department of Transportation, who oversees the use of these vehicles on our roadways today. So the vehicles are operating in a very high percentage fully autonomous. But we do have safety attendants or ambassadors on board whose responsibility is to both educate welcome passengers and introduce them to the technology, help them feel comfortable with these types of services, but also to take over manual control should that be needed if there's an event on the roadway that requires some level of intervention. Fast forward a couple of short years, and those attendants are going to be virtual or remote. So we will in our types of services always have a human in the loop. It will shift from being an onboard attendant to a virtual attendant. And you can only imagine, especially in the area of public transportation, if there is some circumstance, be that a traffic jam or a pothole on a roadway or some other eventuality, you still have to be able to communicate with passengers on board if there's a reason to pull a vehicle off the side of the road, let people know what's going on and what to do about it.
Okay, great, I'll bring one into that discussion. Now, can you just tell us a little bit about your work at Tavasot Group.
So I lead innovation and a brand experience in what most people would traditionally think of as a development company. However, Tavisak Development, which is the area that I focus mostly in, is not your traditional developer. We are actually an owner operator and in the case of BEEP, we have a place called Lakenona where directly contiguous to the Orlando Airport. We're proud citizens of the city of Orlando, but we represent an advanced district in the city, and it's a fairly large advanced district. We're approximately seventeen square miles to give you a point of comparison, Manhattan's twenty two, so it's a fairly large swath of land. And then we have pretty much every use case inside like no, no, I mean, we have universities, high schools, people can go to preschool, there's micro apartments, there's large homes, so it becomes this really interesting place. It's for people to live, but also for companies that are on the forefront of technology to use us a living lab. The reason BEEP is a critical partner for Lignona is because we believe mobility is one of those things that create a lot of friction inside a community. Right you come to a place and parking is difficult moving from one place to the other. That's really kind of like they're not so enjoyable, not so great parts of being in communities that are successful. In Lignona, we've tackled that friction with immobility by a variety of things, but we've also incorporated BEEP under autonomou shuttle operation as a critical part to provide that first and last mile mile and a half inside the community for people to traverse, and it's something that has been running now for multiple years. We have what I believe today is the largest and longest running autonomous shuttle operation in the United States in Lakenona. It's actually so prevalent now that we're coming close to the end of the year where we had a kid, you know, last Halloween actually dressed up as one of the autonomous shuttles. So it's something that's both an incredible service that reliefs striction, but it's become a natural part of the ecosystem that people live with and live in in Lachdana.
Yeah, I'm interested in how that autonomous shuttle bus started and was there any I guess pushback or were any challenges with the community to try and get this sort of thing deployed.
Actually, it was incredibly well received. It started in a conversation with the founders of BEEP. We were actually having a conversation about a different topic and the topic of autonomous mobility came up, and after that conversation. Fast forward eleven months and the company had been created, the vehicles have been brought into the US. We've worked with Department of Transportation and NITSA to make it happen, and from a community perspective, we actually did an outreach process where we actually allowed critical members of the community to be a part of understanding what the vehicles would do. For example, we had a specific day where the beeps were on preview just for first responders, so we showed our police department and the fire department how to work with the vehicles, how to operate them, how to move them if necessary, and when the vehicles rolled for the first time, we had a community that was ready, so we didn't have much pushback. Now we had people have to adapt to having a vehicle with no driver right because even though there's a safety attendant on board, the vehicles operating on its own and it operates differently than a humanly controlled vehicle. So we had some situations where people were like learning to interact with them, but for the most part, it was very well received. One of the hallmarks of known as a community is that our citizens, they think of themselves almost like citizen scientists. They're almost asking us what's new every week. It's like, what's the new thing to try. They've come to expect strange things to happen, you know, in the roads and other places in Lignona. So I think it was significantly better received because of the education that we did, because the first responders were on board, because we gave community previews, so it was not like suddenly, you know, self driving car shows up in the middle of the community.
Right okay.
And in terms of I mean we've talked about the autonomous side of things and the AI. Are there any other AI techniques or technology that has been used for general community planning and development? Are there any other tools out there that is currently being used?
So from a legnano perspective, it's pretty significant. We actually have a very detailed data overlay that actually shows us how the city is behaving. Everything is private, so there is no personally identifiable information being collected, but we collect a wide variety of behaviors. I know how long people wait for an uber, I know the specific state of parking garages. Every spot is instrumental, so we know if there's a weight for them. We know how the beaps are flowing inside the community, and that is fed into a large data environment where we actually use AI driven tools to both predict and model the behavior of the environment. We've done presophisticated prediction on mobility using AI, but we also use it for energy consumption. We use it to detect unknown patterns, like, for example, the impact of having pets in the environment and how that changes visitation. So when you look behind the scenes at what allows Lakenna to operate and what allows Beep to find such a fertile environment for testing and operating these vehicles here, there's a significant amount of AI and data that actually powers our community.
Yeah, that's pretty cool. Just as you're describing the amount of data and be able to find all their starts. It just reminded me of the SimCity series of games that I used to play quite a bit, and using that to make decisions to make your citizens happy.
I may have said once or twice that I get to play SimCity with a real city to a degree, so I know exactly what you mean.
We'll be right back after a quick break. Where do world changing ideas get their start? At Intel? It starts with real solutions, and real solutions start with exceptional engineering. Empowering those with disabilities starts with assistive AI, and stopping crop loss from infestation starts with thermal imaging and open technology, while artificial intelligence that predicts depression starts with educational programs like Intel's AI for Youth. And that's just the start the quantum computing revolution. The next generation of AI experts the renewable energy grid, liquid cooling, data centers, radiation exposure prevention in space, water restoration, and early cancer detection. The examples are countless, the impacts are endless, but the foundation is always the same. It starts with Intel. Learn more at Intel dot com, Forward Slash Stories Welcome back to Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast. When you think about AI in our environment, the question of oversight often comes into play. How did these tools manage incidents in the community. What metrics or data are you to determine when an AI tool should engage or intervene. I often think of the pacemaker as an example of how AI can be used to positively impact our lives. A monitoring system that is set up to only act when a severe change has occurred. BEEP is creating a system with checks and balances that can be more reliable than humans in reporting incidents. Vehicles are constantly collecting information inside and outside around what it observes and encounters that can make the community safer and more efficient.
If you think of the in cab and environments and you think of the scenario of not having a person of authority on board, there is no driver, there is no attendant. In the future, I mean, we're developing tools and techniques that monitor the activities of the writers to ensure we understand that if there is a health event, you know, somebody crouches over their chair as an example, if there's an unfortunate situation like somebody were to present a weapon. You have to think of all these types of use cases, and what's critical about that is being able to process that observation and quickly align that with how we would get some communication into the vehicle and or immediately dispatch support or services. You know, one of the things that is so important about these vehicles is in the event of an incident, you have the perfect eyewitness. Every time you're videotaping what's happened in an intersection, you're leveraging that information and data to measure exactly how did an autonomous vehicle respond and so an important piece of leveraging data in the future for the work that we're doing is going to really reinvent how we do things like supporting police activities out there in the area of data collection and determining fault in scenarios, but most importantly taking that data back and improving situations that may be hazardous to roadway conditions that result in accidents and things of that nature. Externally, if you think of all the data that is being collected, simple things that we're able to determine by being out there on the roadways in these different traffic scenarios are used to improve traffic flow and one hit on some of the things they do in standing road infrastructure that can also be done in the data that's collected through these vehicles. There are scenarios where public works departments can utilize the data and we can send them examples of where a tree limb is growing out over a power line, or potholes in the road, or other circumstances that may create a safety issue that need to be addressed. And so there's just an enormous amount of observation that's going on every time we are on a route that that can serve so many important purposes, just to proactively address things before they come problems.
I think it's pretty unique that you have now these autonomous vehicles moving throughout communities. They carry people and provide service, but they're also a very accurate scanner.
Right.
Autonomous vehicles have cameras, they have light ar. When you ride the beeps, you actually see in a display what the vehicle is seeing, and it's like recording every minute detail of the environment, and it's a three D view of the world around it. So it's I think a unique opportunity and one that we haven't fully utilized yet of having these objects that are three D scanners that are traversion the community thousands of times a month, and they can provide us with an incredible amount of information. So I think it's a unique opportunity and one would we haven't utilized as much of the data that the vehicles generate as we could.
But there's a lot more to Lake Nona than their revolutionary public transportation. One that stands out to me, which I hope more towns and cities will consider, is Wi Fi access for all its residents, something that's quickly becoming an essential utility. Lakenona is also home to the most technologically advanced hotel in the world, the Lake Nona Wave Hotel. Beyond the new fangled tech for residents and visitors, Lakenona also considers itself a living lab community where companies and innovators can connect, collaborate, and test their prototypes and ideas in a real world setting. And in terms of the partnership with Intel, while our start with you, what were some of the technologies and help that Intel provided your project?
So we are primarily an Intel shop when it comes to processing. We utilize Intel CPUs for a variety of the data that we collect, and we're even experimenting right now with Intel GPUs as a way to actually do some of the heavier data processing. So it's one thing that's always running and always behind the scenes from our perspective. Now, we have a variety of partners like people that actually engage in some of the more advanced technologies that Intel has to offer. But from our part, it's a strong combination of tried and true you know CPUs and you know, we're getting some pretty interesting performance results from Intel GPUs now that make them usable for a variety of data crunching tasks for large data sets that we find interesting.
Yeah, I just want to switch now a little bit to the safety side of things. I've actually got a bit of a background in mining, and I was around with the advent of the whole autonomous mining vehicles with those huge dump trucks being in a loaded and driven without any drivers, which is a real site to see. Going through some of that technology, they had a very strict, multi layer approach to safety. There was like seven tiers right down to people having actual buttons they can press, and it just shuts everything down. How have you tackled the approach of safety, particularly in a much more open environment than a mind sight.
First, I would tell you as you look at autonomous mobility, safety is the primary driver of why these technologies exist. You know, in the US, ninety four percent of all accidents and many tens of thousands of fatalities a year a result of human distraction, impairmile and error, and that's a well known fact. Obviously, taking some of the faults of the driver out of the equation by utilizing technology that's never distracted, never impaired, and always on is an important aspect of this. But It's not just about achieving an equivalent level of safety, which is a common phrase used at the standards of how do you choose to put an autonomous vehicle on the road. You have to prove that it's equal to or better than the driven vehicle in the eyes of our government, the US Department of Transportation and Knits in particular. Well, if you think of the opportunity and one hit on some of the technologies in Lake Nona to have roadside infrastructure that is looking down a roadway, communicating with our vehicles and telling us that the trajectory of a particular car at a particular speed is telling us it's very likely to run that red light. So it's not just about the vehicles themselves, it's about that entire connected infrastructure and how you use other technologies to give you views of scenarios or predict the event that may happen. Given the information that we're perceiving from roadside infrastructure or intersection infrastructure, that can be fed to these vehicles to dramatically improve safety and reduce some of these scenarios that candidly a human would never see or understand from their vantage point just behind the wheel of a car, and so I think those things are equally as important as the great work that's going on with the autonomous platforms themselves.
Now looking into the future, Joe, as you know, AI is evolving very rapidly, particularly around generative AI and even just the visual AI capabilities. With new GPUs coming out all the time, how do you place BEEP strategically so to take advantage of any sort of new technologies that come out, and so that you're keeping ahead of the competition and also be able to serve your communities better.
If you look at the future of autonomous mobility, obviously the market that we are focused on, and you think of expanded use cases and evolving from you what today in our world are planned services, planned routes, GEO fenced areas, and the broader that you expand the horizons of the types of environments that these vehicles would ultimately traverse and serve. It's just going to be very very critical that we as a business stay out in front of how we leverage AI to improve what these vehicles are able to do. It's going to be comperative for our business model to succeed by utilizing the technology and the AI technologies in particular to be able to understand, perceive, and properly respond to these situations that are out there both on our roadways and in our vehicles, so that we can provide a safe, convenient service for expanded use cases across the country.
Did you want to add to that?
Definitely, and maybe fast forward a little bit more into the future. Today, we use AI and we use the tools that we have in our toolkit to make things safe and efficient, right, and that's definitely the right order to take. I mean, safety is the number one concern and then making sure that it's efficient. But then once you tackle those I think AI opens the opportunity for things that are very unique. How about the vehicle recognizing that the persons that are there, because we're able to look into their schedules, they have an extra two minutes and there's a side road that could be calm right where they could see a lake or what if you're able to figure out that there's a live event going on, and instead of having only the opportunity for you to attend because you're there, the system automatically redirects the non essential traffic to one where you can actually listen to live music as you go in. I think the experiential opportunities of this intersection between technical AI for efficiency for safety, couple with let's call it human understanding powered by AI, they open these intersections that we haven't thought about. Right, Maybe when we get the next version of your routing on your GPS, when you pull it in your phone, it's not going to say avoid toolls. It may say bring my blood pressure down right. It may say let me discover the place that I'm in. That's the thing that really excites me is sure we'll use the tools to make sure we tackle the technical so that we can deliver the experiential.
Okay, Finally, I like to sort of wrap it up with some ethical type questions. We talked a little bit about data privacy and user privacy. You do work with a lot of local governments and local municipalities. I'd like to get your thoughts on how do we strike that balance or even if indeed there is a balance, or should be just ensure by default that it users privacy is sacrisanct.
First, I mean, obviously, even with the data collected, we have to honor the PII restrictions and other things that exist in our country and certainly respect that right privacy. I will tell you that a lot of the information that's gathered is not to identify details of an individual. It's about taking that collective body of information to predict certain outcomes or events and identify certain behaviors that would enable us to address the situation or perform a different service. But very very critical we're able to capture these images and the information that we do to ensure we're improving the safety and performance of these types of platforms and work within obviously the respected boundaries that we all have.
For audience, Can you just define the PII? Sure?
It's personally identifiable data, usually a collection of things that can allow you to identify a personal like, for example, your name, your address, your telephone number, and in some other cases things like your biometrics like your face, or other things that are uniquely attachable to you. I mean, other environments and other users of data I think have a much tougher situation because they have to deal with personally identifiable data to conduct your business because who you are is critically important to how they deliver the service. It's not yet for what we do, and by just not collecting the data and then making sure we have no opportunity to actually look at one individual, only collective data. We put ourselves in a situation that we are not infringing into people's identities or privacy.
That's good to know. Thanks Joan one for your time today. It was really great talking to you and I've learned a lot.
Thank you, Graham.
Yeah, thanks very much. Enjoyed it.
I would like to thank my guests Joe and Juan Santos for joining me on this episode of Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast. I gained significant insights from my guests today and I hope you found it enlightening as well. My primary realization is that AI and technology have the power to shape and nurture local communities. I'm always inspired by grassroots solutions as opposed to overarching, top down strategies. Both Joe and Ie emphasize the criticality of data privacy and the necessity to protect users' personal details, particularly since they are working with local governments and agencies. On a technical front, it's evident that BEEP is adapting and evolving in its approach to autonomous vehicles. Currently, their shuttle models are facilitated by attendants, but the trajectory suggests that in a few years, these shuttles might operate autonomously with minimal supervision. Watching this transformation unfold is genuinely and exciting. While it's easy to be captivated by new technology, and I'm no exception, it's crucial to prioritize the user experience and the tangible benefits it brings to enriching lives from the Roman aqueducts to present day innovations. It's the relentless drive and commitment of visionaries like Joe and Juan that propel us forward. With a touch of luck and their pioneering spirit, we may soon pave the way for a future that would leave even the Jetsons and all. Please join us on Tuesday, December twelfth for the next episode, when we will learn about how Intel's AI for Workforce program is making learning AI more accessible. Technically Speaking was produced by Ruby Studios from iHeartRadio in partnership with Intel and hosted by me Graham Class. Our executive producer is Moley Sosha, our EP of Post Production is James Foster, and our supervising producer is Nikkia Swinton. This episode was edited by Cira Spreen and written and produced by Tiree Rush. Where do world change ideas get their start? At Intel? It starts with real solutions, and real solutions start with exceptional engineering, the quantum computing revolution, the next generation of AI experts, the renewable energy grid, liquid cooling, data centers, early diagnosis for cancer, water restoration, and even farmland protection. The examples are countless, the impacts are endless, but the foundation is always the same. It starts with Intel. Join us in redefining what's achievable through the power of AI. Learn more at Intel dot com slash Stories.
