10.5.23-Showcase-Tokyo-Venti_Technologies

SJOERD DE CLERCK: Thank you, Rio. And good afternoon, Tokyo. What you see on the screen is the Port of Singapore.

Every year, 36 million containers move through that port. That's 100,000 containers per day that need to be loaded, offloaded, and that need to be transported, moved. That's why we are in Singapore because at Venti Technologies, we strive to be a global leader in autonomous vehicle technology for the logistics market. Think moving containers in a port, moving baggage or cargo in an airport, or moving goods out of a factory to a warehouse or to a yard.

We have deep roots in MIT. Our founding professor is Professor Daniela Rus, who is still today the director of CSAIL, one of the largest robotics labs in MIT. Many of our 130 staff are her PhD students.

We are growing fast in Singapore. We have 16 nationalities today, amongst which one lonely Belgian. That's me. And we continue to grow that stuff.

And why do we do this logistics? Because our customers tell us we solve three major problems for them. One, it is very difficult today to find drivers that are willing to drive a truck. It's not a glamorous job anymore.

I'm sure you as father or mother, you do not dream that your son or your daughter becomes a truck driver, right? That's the same for the whole world. There are no truck drivers anymore. And when you find them, they are expensive. So going autonomous saves you a lot of money.

When you find them, they are human. And humans take holiday. They take lunch breaks.

They take toilet breaks. They get sick. Sometimes if you look today in the US, they even go on strike.

And when they drive, they are not very good at following the rules. A robot is simply better at following rules. And in dangerous environments, you want the rules to be followed. And as the third advantage, in spite of rigorous safety in ports and in airports, every year around the world tens of people, unfortunately, die in those environments because they are dangerous environments. Taking the human out of harm's way by automating your transport therefore improves the safety element.

How does the system work? Well, there are four elements. We start by converting your existing vehicles.

We're a software company, not a hardware company. We don't build vehicles. We use your vehicles, put sensors on it, LiDAR sensors on it, and convert them. Then we map your environment very precisely. We build the autonomy stack, the software, which is the intelligence that drives the car, which sits inside the vehicle, without any sensors, by the-- without any infrastructure in your environment, by the way.

And last but not least, we have a remote operation. This is level four autonomy. The robot drives where it can. If it comes to a safe stop, we have a supervision system through our remote operation that can assess the situation and that will tell the robot what to do next.

Our claim to fame is that we're very, very precise. We can park these 40-foot trailers, 20 tons' worth of container to an accuracy of 2 centimeters. Why do we need that? Because the cranes that pick up and deliver these containers are automated also. And they have an accuracy of 5 centimeters, so we need to be more precise than the crane.

Now, I don't know how good you are at parking your car. But 2 centimeters consistently throughout the year is better than I can do. So this is an element where robots actually outperform people.

As mentioned, we do not install any infrastructure in your environment, in your factory, in your yard, no sensors, no transponders, no GPS, nothing. The entire intelligence sits in the vehicle. And this is probably the best illustration that I can give. This is a very short movie or film, video. There's a longer one on the booth, self-driving truck in the Port of Singapore.

It reads road signs. So we stop for stop signs. We align with the crane in the so-called working lane.

We wait for the crane to arrive and unload. We measure the height. So we see when the crane has left.

We wait at traffic. We look left. We look right. We wait for an opening to move through. And the robot continues its line.

As you can see, it's a working port in mixed environment. All these other trucks are driven by people. We stop for obstacles.

There is a truck coming on the left that you can just see above the mirror. That was not supposed to be there. So the robot stops. It waits till the hindrance has passed. So we can actually operate in a very complex environment, in mixed traffic, and be fully operationally moving goods. We currently have about 20 of these trucks driving actively, moving containers in the Port of Singapore.

So why are we here? Well, Japan and Korea, where we are going next, have all these characteristics that are ideal for automation-- aging population, high labor costs, manufacturing countries, manufacturing companies, so factories that produce goods, which means-- which need to be moved out. And therefore, we are very interested in talking to you if you are a factory, if you are manufacturing something, and you want a safer and less costly solution for your logistics challenges. Thank you very much.