The future of mobility: 2050 and beyond | Carla Bailo | TEDxOhioStateUniversity

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/ted

Dedicating herself to the auto-industry, Carla Bailo has been around cars for a long time. Throughout her career, Carla has strived to provide the safest and most efficient vehicular experience for the public. She has recently launched the Smart Mobility Initiative, working to analyze the usefulness of autonomous vehicals. She and her colleagues are using Columbus, Ohio as a test bed for smart mobility. Carla spends her time on stage discussing the purpose of smart mobility, the technology behind it, and the Smart City Challenge in Columbus.

Carla Bailo is the Assistant Vice President of Mobility Research and Business Development at The Ohio State University. She is also the President and CEO of ECOS Consulting, LLC which specializes in Engineering Efficiency and Optimization as well as Electrification and Computer Operated (Autonomous) Vehicles. Bailo previously served as OEM business unit divisional general manager for Nissan Motor Company, Ltd in Japan. In this multi-dimensional role she was responsible for overall operations, revenue and profitability of Nissan’s OEM relationships for vehicle, powertrain, technology and intellectual property business worldwide. Later, Bailo was transferred to Nissan’s global headquarters in Japan as vehicle program director. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Transport yourself into 2050.

And think about
where you're going to be living,

where you're going to be working,

and where you're going to go shopping,

if we still go shopping
in that time frame.

And how you going to get
from place to place to place?

I've been in the automotive business
for 37 years,

and we've never seen a disruption
as we're seeing today.

People don't want to buy cars anymore.

Young adults don't want
to get licenses anymore.

We're seeing mobility services
crop up everywhere.

But the big questions to me are three,

and one is: how can we keep our roadways
safe and accident-free?

Secondly, how can we have

or completely eliminate
our carbon footprint?

And thirdly, how can
we improve people's lives

especially those of the elderly
and the disabled?

And this is really
where smart mobility plays a huge role.

Smart mobility here in Ohio
will allow us to demonstrate

all of these technologies

and also to provide the workforce
for this changing space.

So let's first talk about safety.

This is the first year in about 12 years

that we actually have an increase
in traffic fatalities on our roads,

and it's not small.

Nationally, it's 8%.

And of those increases
in traffic fatalities,

85% to 95% of those are caused
by human error.

We have to stop
killing ourselves in our cars.

So let me take you down
the road of safety.

First, we're going to start with ADAS

to V2V, to V2Eye,
to autonomous, to your self-driving,

and don't worry I'll tell you
what all those things mean.

Up in the upper left-hand column,
what you're seeing is

what we call ADAS:
Advanced Driver Avoiding Systems.

And if you have a more recent car,

it's all those things
that beep at you, and buzz at you,

and tell you need to do something

because you're about to do
something stupid.

Like backup, auto-braking,
or forward collision warning

around view monitor.

That's the beginning of smart technology,

but that's only helping us
stay out of a problem.

We really need to make the car
think like a human.

The second phase is
vehicle-to-vehicle communication, V2V.

These are the vehicles communicating

so that you know
what each other are doing.

And you can avoid, again,

when the car beeps at you,
some potential situation.

Then, there's V2Eye,
vehicle-to-infrastructure.

And in this case, it's really
syncing with the signals

to allow us to move more efficiently,

and also syncing with pedestrians
and/or construction zones

to keep those around us safe.

This is really just the beginning;

now we need to apply
the human intelligence,

make the product think like a human
so it can drive itself.

So now we're going to really get geeky.

And I know it's probably scary hearing
an engineer say that she'll get geeky,

but I promise, I'll come back out.

This is an autonomous car,

and when we first started
thinking about autonomy,

we did the obvious thing,
we looked at nature.

And we looked at flocks of birds,
we looked at schools of fish.

Places where the animals
were densely packed,

moving at high speed,
all going towards the same place.

But they never run into each other,
they don't cause accidents.

So we thought we really need
to replicate that with sensors on the car.

And that's what we do
with about 18 to 20 different sensors.

The first and probably most important
is LIDAR - also the most expensive one -

which is Light Detection and Ranging.

That's what allows us to see

what's happening several car lengths
in front of where we are,

and gives you that complete,
around view sense of what's happening.

RADAR: everybody knows
what radar is from the weather I hope.

You know, the signals come back and forth;

we can measure distance
and velocity with radar.

Third, camera.

Everyone has a camera,
we all know what they are.

There's usually
between four and six of them

strategically mounted
so that the car can see 360°.

Your mother wasn't the only one
with eyes in the back of her head.

And next, GPS mapping

so that we know where we are
and the roadways.

Some manufacturers use it a lot,
some don't use it so much.

Every company has their own philosophy.

We take all of the data
from all those sensors

and create the programs
that allow the cars to drive themselves.

You see a couple of examples
on the screen behind me.

The question is

and why do we need to do
more testing and evaluation is

we don't know what's going to happen
when a Google meets a Ford,

or a GM meets a Ford.

Every car is programed
to think differently.

We need to know
how they're going to interact.

We need to put them out
on the roadway and try it out.

And then the other complication is

we're going to have dumb cars
out there for a while;

they don't have any of this technology

at least 11 to 15 years, maybe longer,

because the average age of our car
today is about 11 years.

We have to know what's going to happen

when these smart cars interact
with the dumb cars as well.

The Ohio Smart Mobility Initiative
- which you're seeing

in a drawing behind me
that you probably can't see -

one of the assets of the university
is the Transportation Research Center

which is a 4,500-acre proving ground
just down in East Liberty, Ohio.

And that's a contained test site
where we can test all kinds of products.

And not just cars, but we can test
trucks, we can test ag equipment,

we can test drones

because in the new reality,
all of these products

are going to be sending up data,
5 pentabytes per second of data.

That has to be analyzed, understood,

and then each has to do
what they are supposed to do.

So a contained testbed there,

a contained testbed on the south side
of Columbus at the new SPARC stadium,

which is another 47-acre site

and in between, over 30 miles of roadway
that we can test all kinds of products

and see what's going to happen
and learn from them.

We have to use Machine Learning
and make the cars learn and understand.

I talked about some other elements,
so let me go into those.

When we look at
what's happening with our cities,

urbanization by 2050,

85% of the world's population
are going to be in cities

with 10 million people or more.

That's huge, and we have to figure out

how we're going to move people and goods
in and out of these congested areas.

And we have to do it, again,
with zero carbon footprint.

Truck platooning, an example here
where the first truck has a driver

and the last truck has a driver,
all those in between do not.

We can save between 7%
and 20% fuel economy.

Secondly, even in a traffic jam,

there's about 20% of the roadway
that's not been utilized.

We don't know where it is,

we can't see it as drivers,
but these cars can see it.

And then,

the propulsion systems need to be clean;

more EVs, more fuel cells, more hybrids,

and most importantly, what we use
to power those zero-emission products

needs to be clean energy in our grid.

Also by 2050, one of our largest growing
segments of population is 65 plus.

Which means we're going to have
a lot more elderly people,

disabled people or soon to be disabled,
mobility challenged.

And we have to maintain our independence.

Here in the US,
we don't have extended families.

We expect our elderly
to manage their lives themselves,

and they want to.

So by providing them not only with a way

to get around down the roadways
with autonomous products

but personal mobility,

automated wheelchairs,
other personal exoskeletal devices,

everything that allows them
to maintain their quality of life

both mental and physical.

And then, when we think about
what this disruption is going to do,

you hear a lot of people talking about

- as usual, when we have disruption -

all these jobs are going to be challenged,
all these people will be unemployed.

We have to flip the page

and think about all the businesses
possible in the Internet of Things.

And secondarily, with this technology
so rapidly approaching,

we need to think about
how we are going to continue

to keep our workforce fully up to speed
with what's happening.

The continuing education demands
are going to be so much more so

than the way that we operate today.

And the opportunities
are going to be endless.

Columbus is quite clever.

It was an intelligent city this year.

And seeing all these changes
including in this area of Columbus,

another half million people
will be here by 2050.

They commissioned a study
called "Inside 2050",

which you can look it up,
and you can see the results.

And it was how we will manage
this influx of people

and not have urban sprawl,

and be able to revitalize our urban city.

We really took a look at
where we want to be in 2050,

and we highlighted areas
that we really need to work to improve,

where we have the gaps today.

And it's primarily an exercise in data.

The smart city is all about data,
and how we utilize data.

So the five areas are access to jobs.

Everyone who lives here
needs to be able to get to and from

their place of employment.

Smart Logistics: we have

one of the largest urban delivery centers
inland ports in the nation.

And how we're going to get
those goods more efficiently?

And how we're going to do
with right size products?

And how we're going to do it
with better, clean energy?

Thirdly is connected citizens.

We actually have mobility deserts
in the city of Columbus.

Areas where people
do not have their own cars,

they don't have access to public transit,
they don't have Internet, cell phone,

believe it or not,
they don't even have a credit card.

So we need to find solutions
so that we can provide mobility

for these areas,
same as everyone else in the city.

Next area is connected visitors,
and you probably like the Buckeye.

We have events here
in Columbus all the time,

and I had a great example last night.

We had a Blue Jackets game,
we had an Ohio State hockey game,

we had the Arnold, we had TEDx,

we had additional things going on,

and all it was, was a huge bottleneck
everywhere around campus.

You can hardly get around.

We need to think of smarter ways
to get people in and out of this city,

think about transit hubs,
think about people parking far away

and being shuttled in
in autonomous kinds of products.

We need to manage that,
again, zero carbon.

And lastly, sustainable transportation:

we need to do more in the area
of zero emissions in our products.

Columbus is going to make this happen,
we're all engaged to make it happen.

So let me leave you with just one thought.

And I call it triple zero:

zero accidents and fatalities,

zero carbon footprint,

and zero stress, access for all.

Thank you.

(Applause)