The Smart City Challenge Application Homestretch: An Open Q-and-A

Good morning everyone and thanks for letting us know where you are from. When I request that information last week and folks who are eager to type in and get you engaged in the process. This is Brian Cronin . Want to give everyone a chance to ask anymore questions and also recognize we had an opportunity to bring in [ Indiscernible ] and [ Indiscernible ] to talk about what their interest is in the program and what they will provide. Sarah and I have a few slides to get us started. We're going to gave a quick overview as what we've been doing. We'll turn it over to mobile I and then we'll have time for additional's questions and answers. As we've indicated our Smart city challenge we're looking to get the best and most creative ideas from cities across the country and looking to innovatively address the challenges they are facing. We're looking to merge transportation data, technologies and applications that can be integrated with existing systems to solve these challenges. Looking how to use advanced data and intelligent transportation technologies and bring them together to reduce congestion protect the environment, respond to climate change, connect undeserved communities and support economic vitality. Coming up on the deadline soon. February 4 and those applications are due. Select up to five cities my challenge finalist and provide them with $100,000. We then plan to phase 2 will select one city to have 40 million from the department, 10 million from broken and some funding from mobile eye. The applications and high-level schedules are due in February we plan to select by early March and then in March and April the cities will have the second phase and I will be due in May and we hope to finish the selection by June. Once again we are looking at bringing together technology to dramatically intrude -- improve safety and mobility. Connected vehicles intelligent infrastructure all come together when we blend the machine learning and big data and services such as mobility on demand. We think we can bring these together into a Smart city and have an order of magnitude of safety improvements, reduce condensed -- congestion, reduce emissions, improve access to jobs and services, reduce transportation costs for government use. Our vision recognizes that every city is unique. You have unique challenges and opportunities although as we look beyond traffic everyone is facing growth issues, aging society issues and other items as we have addressed earlier. Our vision is to identify an urbanized area where advanced technologies are integrated into the aspects of city and play a critical role in helping cities and their citizen address challenges in safety, mobility, sustainability. There are 12 elements and priority order and the highest priority relates to open automation, connected vehicles and intelligent sensor-based infrastructure. In the next priority you can see user focus mobility service and choices, urban analytics and urban delivery and logistics. How you can bring partners together and use the smart grid and how do we bring the citizen into the mix. Finally we have the foundational elements of an architectural standards and security. With that I will turn it over to Spencer reader and he will provide an update from Vulcan.

We know that leverage it in mood -- innovation is important for achieving the nation and individual committees climate golds and we want to be supportive of that. Transportation is a number two sector so it is an important issue for us in many of those working on those issues. Our priority aligns with many of the vision that are aligned in that [ Indiscernible ].

There are also other elements namely one for seven, nine and 12 that also provide for benefits and lowering the carbon footprint of the system. We will be looking at all of those elements as they come in and working alongside our partners at DOT to evaluate the city's applications for our purposes. One of the thing that is not included and I should take the opportunity to mention is a supply of electricity. It's important as you think about electrification of transportation without electricity is coming from and how it is produced. We're looking for cities that are ambitious for the electricity supply so that will be one of the additional things that we will be working with city on as we entered that final stage. Other things I mention which are in one way or another and that no foe we're looking from ideas to increase the electric share vehicles. Also transit electrification. We also want to see how those kind of advances can motivate increased 80 update within the private sector. Interested on how to expand the Smart city concept throughout the city. Autonomous vehicles are also high interest to Vulcan. I guess the final thing is that we are interested in an ambitious vision that demonstrate to other cities what is possible. We're looking for the cities that are selected as finalist in the Windy City to develop an articulate that vision and develop a playbook that other cities across the country can follow. I'm happy to take any questions. We have information on our website that will be provided in the chat box. We also have an email. Please feel free to email us with any questions or inquiries you have. We look forward to working with all of you and with that I will transfer back over to Brian. Thank you for the time and we look forward to any questions.

Thank you very much. We are typing in the email for sending questions directly to Vulcan now. As far as the website you can do -- go to tran05.com. We have a link to where Vulcan for Smart cities on their website. Thank you very much. We will do the Mobileye information and then we will come back and open it up for questions.

We are here with Mobileye. They want to show a quick video.

Over 600,000 vulnerable road users worldwide are killed in road crashes every year. Many of them due to crashes with large vehicles. Mismatches between large vehicles and road users occur due to blind spots surrounding the vehicle. These blind spots pose the largest threat when turning. Mobileye is a safety technology for large vehicle in large urban environments. It helps avoid injuries and fatalities. Using an array of strategically placed artificial vision Smart cameras Shield plus access the operators third I continuously monitoring the blind spots. Shield plus provides real-time visual and audible and vibrational alerts when pedestrians or cyclists are in a danger zone providing operators adequate time to react. Using smart artificial vision technology to analyze the dynamic driving environment Shield plus reduces alerts by ignoring inanimate objects and pedestrians in safe zones. Shield plus is connected to a telematics system recording the location of alerts providing decision-makers with the real-time data on infrastructure deficiencies known as hotspots. For the first time giving them the tools to create the necessary changes and reduce potential collisions. The revolutionary Shield less technology creates a smarter urban environment making our city saver -- safer for everyone.

Brian?

Yes -- looks like it stopped.

It's working on ours.

Maria, if you want to switch back to the presentation.

Okay everyone, we are sorry that the video was glitching through the process but a maternity over to them for a few minutes for some slides.

Are you ready for the slide presentation?

Yes.

I'll begin -- financier thank you for organizing this. To give you a general background MOBILEYE is a leader in collision technology. We work with over 90% of the auto industry. We provide life saving features such as fraud coalition and [ Indiscernible ]. In that field we felt that it was natural to enter this SHIELD+ technology which is artificial blind spot detection for vulnerable road users in large vehicles and urban environments. We can go to the next slide. I begin by giving a brief disc option on how the technology works and how it works for Smart cities. SHIELD+ uses smart angle the type dish detection. We only want to detect vulnerable road users in an area at which they are a danger. When the vehicle travels in a straight path we detect a much more acute angle when the vehicle is turning. Naturally is because when the vehicle is turning our cyclist through 4 feet away is in danger because of their wheels traveling. When the vehicle travels straight the cyclist may not be in as much danger. On the next slide you'll see we also use artificial smart artificial vision technology. It can be trained. As such the sensors understand when they see a vulnerable road user including a pedestrian in the blind spot they can ignore inanimate objects like fire hydrants, garbage cans and etc. It's important that the operators only receive a warning when necessary. The next light you'll see how we deliver warnings to the operators. The operator receives the exact time when we find that danger. Directional warning and level of warning increases with the level of danger with the vulnerable road user allowing the operator to mitigate the collision when the vulnerable road user is a blind spot. On the next light, in addition to giving operator warning we also deliver an external warning as well so that [ Indiscernible ] will receive that warning when necessary. Perhaps they are looking down and not paying attention when you're crossing the street and providing both to the operator in the vehicle and to the vulnerable road user we are doing everything necessary to prevent that collision if possible. What's important about having smart technology is that these alerts are delivered only when necessary. We reduce false alerts using smart angle detection and artificial vision and that way if not a nuisance to the operator and when they do receive it it's because they absolutely need it and they can react to it and externally the road users also only get the warning when they are at danger as oppose going off every time the vehicle turns. Moving felt in the presentation, and how it relates to Smart cities. Of course cities especially that urban downtown area if we move to the next slide you need to have public transportation and large vehicles as you can see in this picture demonstrated on the right here. For example on buses, we have -- you can see -- sit a lot more people on buses safely. With our aim is with SHIELD+ that have to be in an urban environment to allow them to operate it safely as possible so that operator can go through his or her day safely and pedestrians and cyclists and motorcycles can also go from point a to point B safely. Everything described up until now the active of the SHIELD+ . Something that is exciting and related to Smart cities is that mapping solution that we provide as well. The way that works every single time a bill -- warning is delivered we map the location and that is extremely important because for the first time we are able to collect real-time big data on your collisions. We believe is important as actual collisions allowing decision-makers to identify dangerous intersections in real time to make those changes and if we move to the next slide you can see cities and urban planners and we know how to make intersections safer and bike lane favors and streets safer. We are always dealing with a specific amount of money and you can't fix every intersection.

On the next light it's a constant update of near crashes with pedestrians and cyclists and all other vulnerable road users. You don't have to go back five or 10 years when the actual accidents happened. It gives you the exact geolocation of incidents. This is important because not always is the intersection the most dangerous perhaps it could be the middle of the street is the danger location so the exact geolocation give you that exact point where the alerts are going off and of course real-time data. It's based on population at the time. On the next light you can see a brief example on how the technology works. This is in Brooklyn New York around Fort Greene Park. We have large vehicles with SHIELD+ area . We have three sets of alerts in total going off on this street. On the next light you can see the -- why the alerts go off. The top left you can see the arrow with EL exact locate dish location is going off. You see a pedestrian crossing in the middle of the street. As a large building on the right-hand side and the entrance to the park is on the left. If you've pedestrians will walk up to the streetlight to cross at the intersection and come all the way back to enter the park and you can see that the pedestrian is crossing in the middle of the street it doesn't always have to be an expensive fix and we identify that. The unprotected by claim can be fixed by changing the painting in the street by allowing their bike lane to be protected and perhaps maybe a stop sign or crosswalk in the middle of the street to allow the pedestrians that are going to cross anyway will cross more safely.

We see that our data is accurate but this data here on injury and to tell it is only with cyclist we see the locations are correct but more so we found -- you can see all this data is always aggregated -- and the ones we found previously the actual location in the middle of the street happened to be a potential hotspot so that's another added value. Moving on to the -- what you are seeing is a vision zero view. Moving to last slide what SHIELD+ does it actively assist that operator of large vehicles and vulnerable road users to safer go about their day. As well it assist decision-makers better understand their cities by having access to real-time big data. Thank you Brian and Sarah for organizing this.

We are also open to question. On the last slide you can see there is a link and you can fill it out and I'll be in touch with you directly through that link and you can ask any questions as well if we don't have a chance during this webinar. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We have a couple more slides from our side that we will go through quickly and then we'll have about half an hour for questions for either Vulcan , MOBILEYE or US DOT.

We will go ahead and move on to a couple of other slides. I've added a couple of slides that are repeat of slides that I presented in a previous webinar about the application content. So this is the application homestretch Q and a I wanted to go back to the content of the application and see if there any questions we can address. As a reminder the intent of phase 1 application is to provide a high level summary narrative of your city's vision of a Smart city demonstration. Applications for phase 1 should like a high-level vision of the city's proposed illustrations. A high-level need only include the framework and the initial concepts of the applicant's proposed demonstration. The detailed approach and detailed budget are not required at this point. The second solicitation which we call phase 2 will require the finalist to submit a detailed technical and management approach to implementing the proposed demonstration as well as a detailed budget. So you can see on the slide applications must include a part one vision narrative and a part to which includes some standard forms and organizational information. There is a page limit to the part one narrative and that page limit is 30 pages of technical content which excludes any cover page or table of contents or letters of commitment. We do ask you don't than me access materials. The requirements for the vision narrative are listed here on the slide. They also included in the notice of opportunity. There are 13 items that you are asked to address in the vision narrative. I recommend you read those in detail. Keeping in mind that the intent of phase 1 is to be a high-level description of your proposed demonstration. That's the reason for the 30 page limit.

Next light shows you the part two of the application which is a set of forms that are available online. The notice of funding opportunities you guidance on how to fill out the various data fields to a certain extent if you have any questions regarding these forms please send an email to Smart city challenge@DOT.gov and I'll be happy to help you with any box on the forms that are not clear. One thing I highlighted in the last webinar was that there is a form that is called the standard form for two for a that asks for a lot a class detail that is not relevant at this point in the phase 1 award you can go ahead and leave blank blocks six through 23 of that form that asks class detail. Those blocks will be required in the phase 2 application.

One thing I want to highlight it is that guns number and registration in the same.gov. They are required to receive an award. If you don't have those items finalized at this point by the February for submittal that's okay but please continue to get them so that the event you do get any ward you will have those items completed. If you go to the same.gov website there's great tutorials and information and helpdesk to help you get properly registered there. That's all the items that I wanted to remind you about the application. It looks like we have questions coming in so I will read them.

We're going to go back to the top for a second and will be with you.

Thank you everyone. So we do have from Kevin Comstock the question is there a representative from Vulcan in the project selection panel?

We are relying entirely on the DOT to run this phase 1 selection before this was announced we met with DOT and there was a lot of alignment and objectives and outcomes here as I mentioned in my statements the vision elements -- will work with the five cities that are selected as finalist that they are fully integrated our objectives and criteria into the detail plan.

Thank you and as we get into phase 2 it will be as a phase 1 as a phase 14 secretary selecting the city that is the winner so we have as we believed in the notice the ability to bring in outside experts to participate in a review and I'll turn to Sarah if she wants to add anything.

In terms of the review panel, that's internal to the federal government. Any outside experts advisory only. One comment on the partners funding for Vulcan and MOBILEYE that are brought to the initiative from a procurement perspective are separate awards so we encourage applicants and cities to reach out to those partners regarding those types of funding as those will be direct awards from this partners and the DOT funding is a separate document although the partners are in support of the initiative there are contractual distinctions between them. We provided you MOBILEYE and Vulcan information if you have questions what they are bringing to the table we encourage you to reach out to them directly.

There has been several questions about the technology and I think the MOBILEYE folks have been typing in.

Sean was asking about crowded areas. Before I answer everyone can also reach out to me and I will type my email in the chat after I respond. Or through the link that we provided. Basically regarding overcrowded areas one of the main features that we refocused on when we are creating SHIELD+ is reducing false positives to the operators . If you have technology with operators and received too many warnings at one time that they need to pay attention to it and unfortunately they become numb to the warnings. Based on that we provide two different type of warnings. I did have a chance to go into that but basically we provide is pedestrian danger zone and pedestrian collision warning. Pedestrian danger zone is predominantly the type of warning that operators receive which simply means we detected a vulnerable road user in the blind spot of the operator and that's the warning we give an Amber alert flashing alert from the side of the warning so no audible alert just letting them know that there is someone in the blind spot and be careful. Specifically in New York is predominantly the alert echoes off when you're an intersection during a bus stop to let them know that there are people that they don't see in the blind spot. What the pedestrian collision warning is the alert when we detect an imminent collision with the road user and not alert is a red flashing alert together with an audible alert and a vibration alert. Of course you give the operator dish get their attention as quickly as possible.

In New York City the operators are happy with the technology because that Amber alert just let them know that there are pedestrians in the blind spot and to be extra careful but it doesn't annoy them because it doesn't always found alert when they do get the collision warning their very happy they received it because it's a much more rare warning that goes off.

While I'm speaking [ Indiscernible ] asked about training. Of course will provide the technology is the operators don't know what the warnings mean and why they are getting them that may not help them so we do provide --

Thank you. There are couple folks talking about out of the questions are for us or comments to cities that they have certain solutions and how do they connect and at the current time we have -- we are counting on cities and suppliers to make connections as they see fit for solutions that cities may want to put in their proposals. We have a question from Joe [ Indiscernible - name ] about desired city and he put" a desired city and I think the comment we've had in our Q&A several times and we answered this somewhat early on is that these are desired character trying to articulate what we see as cities size, density, open data and other issues that we find important for Smart city but you take those characteristics mixed with the vision elements and that technical merit questions in the 13 items they are described better asking people to discuss in their proposal and will take all of that into consideration as we determine who are the recommended sites for consideration as a Smart city.

To add to that we've been asked if there outside the population range or guidelines if they're in eligible I've mentioned before -- the eligibility requirement is spelled out in the notice is that the prime applicant be a state or local governmental entity. That's the only at legibility requirement. The Reds of the information regarding population, density and etc. that all falls of their technical merit and your application will be evaluated in accordance to the technical criteria and if you're short in one area we expect a lot of competition they should plan on being excellent in another area.

There's another question building off of that from [ Indiscernible - name ] dish can you compare the priority of the vision elements and vision narrative elements against the desired city characteristics.

The technical merit is how we are going to evaluate. There are a set of technical merit items and I believe they are of equal importance so on page 35 of the notice there are four different ones so a draw your attention to that.

What I would say is articulate our vision and the different vision elements and summarize them in the notice. Folks are more willing to provide their vision and their solutions as they relate to those elements and others in the proposal.

One of the previous questions is will the questions and answers discuss here today be posted online and the answer is yes. I am compiling all the Q&A and try to capture all the Q&A occurred here we can continue to check the Smart city challenge website for additional Q&A to be posted. I estimate this week.

Have Sarah scroll up to the top to see if we missed any other questions that came in early.

If I can jump in brine was asking whether he can use any of the images from our presentation as long as he writes down the [ Indiscernible ]. Everything can be shared.

The icons from the 12 vision elements that is public information. If someone wanted to reuse that they are more than welcome to.

A question from Jane regarding the part two forms can examples or templates forms be provided for the conflict of interest acknowledgment of title II, appendix a and any others be provided? They're not templates for that that's pure acknowledgment so you should have acknowledgment text in your application. You can steal from the wording that is in the notice and indicate acknowledgment. Another question are there any human factors studies conducted to evaluate operators performance? With operators become heavily rely on MOBILEYE ?

One of the first things that we do in driving training when we install SHIELD+ this is to something to assist them to get through their day. Should deftly not be relying on it or take their attention from the road at all. So we have not found any cases where drivers rely on this technology because again it helps get through your day.

Another question when and where women we may be able to see the list of applicants. The list and the finalists will be announced in early March. As far as releasing the list of applicants, I don't think we are going to but if we do release that it would be at the Smart city challenge website so you can continue to monitor that website.

To respond I just wanted to say one more time that all MOBILEYE is strictly based on artificial vision technology and not radar so not relevant for this system.

There's a question about DOC inspection and of course the department the White House is very much in looking how we can maximize the use of [ Indiscernible ] that is available across all spectrum ranges. We do and continue to talk to Secretary and [ Indiscernible ] about the importance of the DC ORC and safety applications and the broader use of the SOC. We have a webinar scheduled for Thursday witches are likely last webinar on the Smart city challenge which will talk about understanding the S RC's. If you have more specific interest about DSRC we encourage you to listen there.

Renewable micro grades there's a question about that and we really can't comment at this point in the selection process about people's recommendations and proposals and thoughts on what they would like to include.

The only thing in terms of the Vulcan respond we are open to any ideas and improve environmental performance of the transportation system . We have encourage cities to be innovative and ambitious on how they do that and certainly depending on the city there will be different approaches that make sense to wear open to all good ideas.

There's a question about long term maintenance cost related to the system been factored into the proposals or pieces and technology. I guess at this point where asking for folks for their high level vision of what they think they can do. We will look at that and what we talk about in this solicitation is about -- we do talk about the ability to implement and things like that so if someone is proposing something that may be questionable related to implementation then that would be considered -- I would guess we are providing funding for the demonstration and operational testing.. We are hopeful that solutions are put place being place within the city that implements and demonstrates and tests that but at this point that is not a requirement.

There's a question we publish the proposals from the finalist or from all the applicants? The department is evaluating this topic right now. Typically we do not. -- Published proposals but people are welcome to ask applicants for their proposals and if they want to release their proposals they are welcome to do so. At this point the answer is no but this question has been asked to the department is evaluating the.

Someone asked for my personal email given that there are 180 people on the webinar preferred to direct everyone to the Smart city challenge preferred to direct everyone to the Smart city challenge@tran05.com and we have our team able to respond. If there something specific to meet you can include that in that email. We are again are typing that in at Smart city challenge again are typing that in@Smartcitychallengetran05.com.

We put up the link for MOBILEYE . So we have a few more minutes we had a couple last slides and a few reminders and we can stay on until 1 o'clock but we've been very -- we've been trying very hard to work with everyone given the short timeframe from this notice to when applicants -- applications are due so we have several implication sessions on data architecture and standards connected vehicles and automation, sharing economy, user focus mobility and accessible transportation. The application process and the late between beyond traffic and the Smart city challenge was held last week. This is a Smart city challenge application home search webinar and on Thursday to have one on understanding dedicated short-range communications. At this point in time that is all the webinars that we have scheduled. If there are any questions please continue to send questions to the Smart city challenge challenge@DOT.gov. All the webinars are recorded and the slides and transcripts are housed on the Smart city website. We have a few more minutes but we wanted to remind folks of those items and Brian [ Indiscernible - name ] will be leading the webinar on Thursday. There's a question about normalizing climate challenge issues. We will take into account -- we have one of the items in the notice about a environment suitable where folks are proposing and what they are planning to do. There is consideration related to that. I think session 6 was last week.

It would last Thursday. The materials are not up there yet but I think they will be at the end of today.

The link to the application if you go to the Smart city website there is on the right side one of the links is to read the notice of funding opportunity and that tells you what to put in your application, what forms to fill out and to email your application to the email address listed which a Smart city challenge@DOT.gov. There is no separate link to a separate application. We describe the content of what you should submit in our notice of funding opportunity provided the email address for you to submit a two and a do date of 3 PM Eastern by February 4.

With that, Spencer anymore questions or comments?

Know, Brian. Vulcan is excited to be part of this effort and look forward to working with cities and other project as it moves power.

Thank you very much. Any comments from MOBILEYE?

It's been very helpful for us to interact with the applicants and we are excited to assist winning cities and all cities get smarted better and that learning about dangerous hotspots.

We see that there are multiple pick -- people typing in the chat box here we have a couple more minutes if there's any last questions. We will be posting the transcript, the slides for the webinar as soon as we can. Usually it takes a day or two.

With that, good luck everyone and thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate your tremendous interest in the Smart city challenge. Have a great afternoon.

Ladies and gentlemen this can close today's conference call. Thank you very much. You may now disconnect.

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