Two vehicles remotely operated by a human driver 15 miles away in the North Side of Pittsburgh are now undergoing testing on roadways and in parking lots at Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT). It marks the latest partnership between the airport's xBridge innovation program and a local startup company.
By partnering with xBridge, Pittsburgh-based Mapless AI Inc. is hoping to further validate its tech, which claims to have the ability to convert most vehicles into ones that can be operated remotely following the installation of its propriety lightweight rack that includes cameras and other sensors to enable remote control of the vehicle. The startup's tech can be mounted to a vehicle's roof and connected to an onboard computer in 15 minutes or less, fully converting the vehicle into one that can be controlled remotely over commercial cellular networks.
For now, the proof-of-concept testing is limited to Mapless employees and about 20 employees at the airport. These workers can use an app to summon one of the cars to shuttle them between either the long-term parking lot — where many PIT employees park — or from one of the airport's pick-up curbs at the landside terminal. The car, remotely operated by a Mapless employee, then drives the vehicle between the two destination points, a process that can be completed in five minutes but could take up to 15 minutes if done by foot.
Throughout the testing, a safety operator remains in the driver's seat to take over in the event of a connection loss and if the automatic deceleration processes built into the tech does not activate automatically as intended.
In the near future, Mapless envisions the technology being beneficial for rental car fleets or for valet service providers as it will eliminate the need and time required for an on-the-ground driver to transit between vehicles and the destinations they are parked. The tech behind the startup, founded in 2020 by prior autonomous vehicle engineers Jeffrey Kane Johnson and Philipp Robbel, doesn't require any permanent alterations to a vehicle and instead operates more akin to plug-and-play, thus not impacting the potential resale value of the vehicle.
"It's a way for us, as you can imagine, to get our foot in the door with airports," Johnson said. "There were a lot of meetings and discussions that went on about what exactly are we going to do, how we were going to do it, what benefits it could bring to the airport mobility ecosystem, and I think we spent a lot of time checking those boxes and making sure that what we're doing is not just a cool tech demo but also something of value that people could potentially use and improve the airport experience, improve the operations of the airport potentially, and also help all the people who are working there.
Johnson said the airport quickly saw the value in what the startup was looking to accomplish. It first began testing a week ago on Oct. 10 and he said PIT employees have been excited to use the service.
"At xBridge, we build partnerships with early-stage companies driving innovation in their industries, giving us early access to new, potentially game-changing technologies while giving these companies the opportunity to test and pilot in a real-world operating environment," xBridge Director Cole Wolfson said in PIT's Blue Sky News media publication. "Mapless AI’s technology and service can have an immense impact on a number of fleet and mobility industries, and we are excited to explore how it can enhance the airport experience."
Mapless employs under 10 workers across its offices in Pittsburgh and Boston. The company closed on a seed round earlier this year but it declined to disclose its sum at this time. It received a $225,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, which coupled with the seed round, will keep the startup running for several years to come at its current spending rate.
Mapless isn't producing revenue yet but it hopes this partnership with PIT will allow it to take on revenue from testing at other locations in the future. Its approach is different from that of autonomous vehicle companies like the several of those that are headquartered in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, which are pitching a product that's truly driverless. That's been a challenge that's proved much harder to overcome in the more than a decade it's been seriously pursued and it's one that Mapless isn't interested in tackling with its remote operations.
"Services like rental car delivery or parking operations; valet parking — we thought our technology allows us to focus on that as a short-term application rather than trying to build out another full AV company that we've worked on before and have seen sort of the ups and downs," Robbel said. "We essentially want to focus on technology where it makes sense, and that is collision avoidance and safety subsystems; we can do that robustly. But for these higher or more difficult, longer-term decision-making [challenges] — like should [vehicle] inch into the intersection or should it overtake and all that — we think that a human can do that today rather than waiting for the promise of AVs."
