10.10.23-Showcase-Seoul- Venti_Technologies

SJOERD DE CLERCK: Good afternoon, Seoul. This is the Port of Singapore. Every year, 36 million containers move through this port. That's 100,000 containers per day that need to be loaded, offloaded, and moved by trucks.

That's why we are in Singapore, because at Venti Technologies, we build technology to move goods autonomously without the need for drivers. And we do so in the logistics market, moving goods, not people. We move containers in container ports. We move baggage and cargo in airports. So next time you fly and you see your suitcase driving by without a driver, that could be us. We do so in factories, moving the output of the factory to the yard, and we do so in warehouses.

We have deep roots in MIT. Our founder, Dr. Daniela Rus, founded a company back in 2018 based on technology developed in a joint venture between MIT and the National University of Singapore, which is why we are Singapore-based. Many of our 130 people by now are PhD students from her robotics labs.

We are growing very fast. We have 16 nationalities, amongst which one lonely Belgian, that's me. And today I'm very happy to be here exactly at LG, because in our round A financing, which we closed earlier this year, LG ventures was actually the leading investor for a round of $29 million. So thank you, LG. It's good to be here today.

Why do we do this? Why do we build autonomous vehicles? Well, our customers all tell us the same story. It is today very, very hard to find drivers. Driving containers around in a port is not a glamorous profession.

If you are a father or a mother, I'm sure it's not your dream that your son or daughter becomes a truck driver, right? So there is a huge shortage of drivers around the world. Therefore if you find them, they're expensive. And if you find them, they are human.

So they take holiday. They take sick leave. They take lunch breaks. If you look at the situation in the US now, sometimes they even go on strike. And they're all by all not that reliable in following traffic rules. Robots are simply better at following rules than human beings.

And last but not least, in spite of very rigorous safety standards in airports, ports, factories, unfortunately every year there are several lethal accidents in these environments. It's a dangerous environment to work in. So by taking the human out of hazard's way, you also improve the safety of your operation. And of course, human lives have no price.

How does the system work? Well, four elements, we start by converting your existing vehicle. We are a software company, not a hardware company. So we don't build vehicles. We don't force you to buy our vehicle. We take your vehicle and we convert it to so-called drive by wire, the capability of being able to drive it electronically.

Then we will map in great detail your entire operation, so that our vehicle has a reference. The core of the system is the software stack. That's the software, the autonomy stack, which is the intelligence of the vehicle. And last but not least, there is remote operations, a human supervisor overlooking the fleet if something goes wrong.

He does not drive. He or she does not drive. They overlook and assess the situation. Our claim to fame is that we are very, very accurate. We can park these 40-foot containers with 20 tons of goods with an accuracy of 2 centimeters.

And that's needed because they interface with automated cranes, which have a tolerance of 5 centimeters. So we need to be very accurate. Now, I don't know how good you are parking your car, but I cannot park my car all year round at 2 centimeter accuracy. So next to reliability, accuracy is another element where robots today are simply already better than humans.

We don't install any infrastructure in your environment, no sensors, no transponders, no antennas, no beacons, no codes. That makes driving easier. But it's a terrible hassle for you in installing and maintaining and cleaning and repairing. So no additional infrastructure in your port, all the intelligence sits in the vehicle.

And this is a short video. I have a longer one at the booth. Self-driving truck in the Port of Singapore, mixed traffic as you can see, here we implement a rule that the vehicle has to stop when there is a container hanging. We read the road signs, so we stop at a stop sign.

We align to the crane. That's this 2 centimeter accuracy. After departure, we look left, we look right. We wait like a human driver would for a spot in the traffic. We turn. We drive along the road. Average speed here is about 25 kilometers per hour.

Here the robot stops, because on the left side, there is a vehicle backing up, which is not supposed to be there. So the robot stops, waits till the hindrance is gone, and then continues its path. I said, longer video in my booth.

Why are we here? Well, because Korea is A, a high-wage country, a high-salary country, has a lot of manufacturing, has a lot of ports, has a big airport, and has, of course, a lot of factories. So if you are in either of these markets and you are transporting goods and you want to reduce the costs, increase the safety, increase the operational efficiency of your logistics, please come and talk to us. Thank you very much.