Ep #13: 5G and the Future of the Trucking Industry with Dr. Ashim Bose

Speaker 1: 0:04

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Speaker 2: 0:05

Five G is one of the most anticipated, promoted and debated technology advancements in modern history. The industry claims that 5g along with AI and machine learning will revolutionize connectivity and communications for many business applications, but as five G play any role in solving the day to day challenges for trucking operations in five G make the life of a truck operator any better. Let's hear what the experts say.

Speaker 1: 0:33

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Speaker 2: 0:33

Hi guys, this is your host. She's Jan. And you're listening to the alignment podcast where we go beyond the buzzwords and connect the dots between technology and his business embark. In this episode, we will dive into a day in the life of a truck driver and sift through the realistic impact that five G can make in the trucking industry. While some analysts indicate that trucking communications are some, two years away from adopting five G technology. Yup. Please do be speaking with a transportation industry expert who can share some realistic light on the subject. Our guest today is dr.[inaudible] chief data scientist and vice president of artificial intelligence and machine learning and Omnitracs, a company that provides SAS based fleet management solutions for the trucking industry. Dr. Rasheem has a BSD in artificial intelligence with deep experience in the automotive manufacturing, transportation and telecon verticals. During his two decade long career, he has held the space telescope science Institute where Isen EDS, HBE, DXC, and a host of other reputable companies solve their technology to business alignment challenges. Welcome dr. Bose is a better to speak with you today. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:41

Great to be here. You been

Speaker 2: 1:44

And artificial intelligence expert and in fact, a PhD on it for a long time and artificial intelligence is just started to surface, I would say several years back. So how come you have been an expert on this for over 15 years or so? Whatever you've been doing in artificial.

Speaker 3: 2:03

Yeah. Great question. I see. So, um, you know, AI has been around a long time, um, starting in the sixties and it has had a few summers and winters along the way. And for those of us who are passionate about, uh, leveraging the techniques that AI can provide and solve real world problems, there is no shortage of problems to solve all the way from planning and scheduling of space observations to optimizing, uh, assembly lines in manufacturing plants, to optimizing supply chains, to, you know, introducing intelligence into our devices, into our way calls. So if you think about it across multiple decades, you know, AI has slowly but surely been creeping into our daily lives. You think about computer vision, natural language processing. Think about Alexa, Siri, et cetera. Think about the intelligence in our photo apps on our phones. AI has crept into our daily lives and it's because there's been some really good solid work going on behind the scenes, uh, over multiple decades. Some, some of which you know, is called out by the media. Some of it goes on behind the scenes. So we go through these cycles of summer and winter and so on, but the hard work continues. And we're seeing that progress manifest itself in our daily lives.

Speaker 4: 3:35

Well, yeah, a lot of people, I I'm sure they use, like you said, Alexa and Siri and photo apps, they don't even realize the technology behind the Israeli AI that is making it possible. In fact, my car tells me now where it's parked or how long will it take me to reach there before even I tell it where I'm going. So there's all a sort of examples of AI is pretty good, really neat on how the technology is playing. Now. We are living in pretty interesting times right now. And couple of it is just changing everything around us. You've been in the trucking industry or the transportation industry, how, how it has changed that.

Speaker 3: 4:13

Yeah, it's, you know, like every other industry, like the rest of our lives, the pandemic has definitely had, uh, impacts, uh, within our industry as well. Obviously, you know, we serve a lot of different customers that sit in different industries as well, you know, all the way from food to, to gas, to, you know, automotive parts and so on and so forth. So, so we serve a lot of different industries and as you might expect, the pandemic has impacted certain industries harder. And in some industries there's actually a spike in demand if you will. So it's definitely having an impact across the board. Obviously when you, when it comes to transportation, you're moving goods from point a to point B and in doing so, you're traversing in our hotspots. And, you know, obviously the focus there is on minimizing risks and we are working with our customers, providing COVID related alerts, uh, leveraging publicly available data and so on, so forth. So that's been well received by our customers. It helps with their planning. It helps reduce risk. You know, obviously one of the other impacts, which is really interesting is when you look at some of the KPIs, the industry KPIs, key performance indicators, you know, things like fuel efficiency, delays in traffic, critical events, which are things like, you know, heartbreaking, sharp turns, accidents, that type of thing. When you think about these type of metrics, there's obviously been a bit of a positive uptake. If you will, given that, you know, there's less traffic on the roads, know our customers have to deal with less craziness on the roadways. And so, you know, KPI like fuel efficiency goes up, you know, KPI like critical events goes down because there's less volume on the roads and that helps. So it, you know, it has had multifaceted impacts within the industry at a tactical level, obviously the truck drivers. So obviously on the road to supporting staff at the back office, a lot of them are now working from home, like the rest of us, uh, which is relatively new to them because typically within the industry, most people were used to working from an office. So, so there's been definitely a push to, you know, improve safety, uh, have people work from home as, as needed. And in some ways that's pushing people to adopt more digital techniques. And I would say it's an accelerator for digital transformation and some of these companies, so really lots of multifaceted impact either the pandemic.

Speaker 4: 7:01

That's interesting. So how is overall, you know, technologies like AI machine learning or for that matter, I'll touch upon five G as well, or just in simply wireless connectivity has come into play and solving the new challenges that you've noticed like overall from a perspective of you've mentioned safety as one of the areas work from home or other areas and collecting information, like in terms of industry KPIs, how does technology come into play and in handling the pandemic or in general from a transportation industry perspective?

Speaker 3: 7:37

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, you know, in terms of technology, we can kind of boil it down to hardware, software platforms. And, uh, when you think about it, telematics, it's been around a long time and we obviously specialize in it. So that's an example of technology in the cab that provides connectivity to the back office. Uh, it helps lead operators with a lot of the metrics around compliance hours of services and important metric for the industry. The number of hours drivers spend on the road between breaks and on shifts and so on and so forth. There are the other metrics that I mentioned, fuel efficiency, critical events, and many more so, you know, so technology is playing a key part in it because it's allowing our customers, uh, the industry to monitor some of these metrics. But, uh, as of late, there have been other additions from a hardware perspective, sensors, cameras, you know, on the truck, in the, in the cab and so on. So, so now, you know, we have the ability to not only collect telematics data, but also take it above and beyond in terms of, you know, other signals from the road ways that can help make, uh, make our customers more safe, uh, more efficient, uh, more compliant if you will. And, uh, so there is the Harvard piece. And then, you know, when you think about software, it's an enabler, it's an enabler to take the data from the cab, from the truck and, you know, move it to the back end. Now it could be a data center could be in the cloud. And obviously that allows us to, you know, run our algorithms, you know, planning, scheduling, compliance, safety, um, and some more esoteric, uh, algorithms as well. You know, things like retention, you know, within the trucking industry, you know, attrition is a huge problem. Truck drivers have a tough life, you know, they're on the road quite a bit without a lot of human interaction and so on and so forth. So, you know, retention attrition is, is a, is a major problem. And so being able to, to leverage the data that's being collected, do some predictive analytics, you know, talk about, uh, when is the driver more likely to quit, can help, can help our customers, you know, proactively work with them and prevent that from happening, which in the, if they're a top 10 or top X percent driver, then that, you know, that that can be a huge benefit to the customer. So there, there are a number of use cases that technology enables both on the front end and the back end. Uh, I mentioned safety, uh, you know, when it comes to safety, you know, the goal here is to prevent bad things from happening. Of course, once the bad thing happens, uh, then you gotta deal with it. And then the issue is to minimize risk, minimize exposure. There are quite a few large claims within the industry have had to deal with just because accidents, um, when they do happen, can lead to lawsuits and so on and so forth. So, you know, risk, risk management risk mitigation is something that technology helps our customers. You know, the first thing of course is to prevent an accident from happening. And the second thing is if it does happen, then trying to figure out the root cause and go through that process in a more data oriented way is extremely important. So these are some of the, um, examples of technology in action within, within the industry.

Speaker 4: 11:25

Cool. Okay. So I'm going to shift the topic a little bit beyond AI, and I know there's a huge discussion and, you know, there said, uh, promotion and debate around the wireless technology and 5g, um, introduction in the market, especially in us and even internationally there, there's quite a bit of talk around, you know, mostly from vendors and the service providers on, you know, all the great things 5g can do. And for the transportation industry, the claims of being, you know, providing a more consistent, uh, telemetry data for field service vehicles and delivery trucks, or, uh, and, and the, and the benefits, you know, span from just expanding on the telemetry to, uh, better visibility, uh, for the transportation industry, uh, to vehicle, to vehicle, uh, interaction or regular to infrastructure interaction, to completely autonomous driving and platooning. So there's a wide span of things that the five G technology enthusiasts like myself kind of likes to talk about. I want to take your perspective on five G and where do you think it realistically applies in actually solving a problem, uh, and when it is kind of a hype.

Speaker 3: 12:42

Yeah, that's a great question. And let me answer it with a use case based lens, if you will, to your point earlier that technology, technology's only as good as the use case it enables, you know, from an adoption perspective. And when you think about a use case more often than not the communication 5g type technologies will interact with other technologies that enable the use case like AI. And so when you look at it, holistically adoption is, um, influenced by things like user perception. Does the user perceive the value add to be positive or negative in terms of their daily life, accuracy, you know, whatever insights that are being provided? Are they really on target or are they off target? And here, the tolerance is important because from a data science perspective, it may be, you know, 80% accurate or whatever, but it may not be good enough for the customer. Trust is another one, you know, do the customers to the drivers, to the back office folks, to the trust in the insights that are being provided through the use case real time performance is important. You know, when things are happening at a split second basis, if the insight that's being provided comes in a few minutes or few hours down the road, then it's useless. So, you know, there is a timing element here as well. And when you think about five G uh, in concert with technologies like AI, they enable all of this, they have the ability to handle all of this. Uh, so, so we are, you know, obviously extremely excited about the impact that like she could have on things like, you know, the user experience, the real time experiences, the more media rich content that could be provided to our drivers, you know, think about, uh, you know, all the time on the road, interacting with one or more devices along with monitoring real time traffic and navigating through it. There is an to provide more engaging, more real time experiences, both in terms of the driving, the autonomous features that are creeping in as well as, you know, when they're at a stop providing them with perhaps some entertainment options, as well as some coaching, you know, kind of just kind of reviewing the drive that they just had and providing some engaging gamified coaching that can help them improve their driving performance to improve the, the KPIs that they may be being measured against and paid against. So it could hit their bottom line as well. So, so these are the types of things, five T in concert with other technologies can enable. And so we are very excited about that, you know, uh, but we have to temper our excitement because there are certain drivers that will dictate, uh, the rate of adoption things like, you know, what devices, um, are enabled through five T you know, what does the coverage, uh, look like through the various providers? What are some of the integration costs, you know, and in general, you know, total cost of ownership, you know, because, you know, within the industry, there's a huge focus on the bottom line, a few dollars one way, or the other per asset per truck can make a huge difference. And so, as we look to, you know, embrace the technology, uh, we have to be priced as to based on our customer's needs and make sure that, uh, this is, you know, aligned with customer's expectations has a compelling ROI business value and so on and so forth. Now you mentioned autonomous trucks and platooning. These are obviously really cool concepts. There are, there is progress being made along the way. You know, we don't expect, uh, you know, full autonomy level, a level five full autonomy to be, um, to be had anytime soon. Um, but having said that there will be steps being taken, uh, in terms of automating more elements of the drive, if you will, and helping, helping the driver with their minute to minute interactions with the Waco. So we definitely see that happening even in things like what's the safe distance to be behind the Waco in front of you. You know, what's the speed at which you want to take turn. So there are some very tactical things that, uh, that will come in terms of autonomy, uh, and, uh, the driver experience before full on autonomy, if you will. We definitely see, you know, some of these new technologies, AI, 5g, et cetera, enabling that. But having said that we don't, you know, in, in the near future, we don't, uh, anticipate there to be a fully autonomous truck with no humans in it. You know, a human in the loop is going to be critical. Now what they do in the Waco is going to change over time as the truck becomes more and more autonomous. And, uh, it will make, uh, the quality of life, um, efficiency, productivity, et cetera, even better as the human in the loop is now allowed to do, uh, more value added functions in terms of the plan, the schedule, the efficiency, and so on and so forth. So that's the way we are looking at it. Obviously we, these are really important, really strategic problems. Uh, we in the industry are dealing with on a day to day basis and working with the OEMs who are also doing a fair amount in this space. So, um, lot, lot to come in the future. For sure.

Speaker 4: 18:41

That's great. So you mentioned something interesting, right? So you were all, you said real time

Speaker 3: 18:46

Experience and media it's experience, but five G will enable

Speaker 4: 18:52

Pretty good, right. In terms of overall wireless connectivity, what is it that five is going to enable that you're not able to do today and especially I'm talking about whether it's experience or telemetric.

Speaker 3: 19:04

Yeah. So it's more about just, uh, you know, improved bandwidth capacity and being able to send and receive more data per second, if you will. You're right. You know, telemetric has been around a while for Jasmine on a while and so on and so forth, but think about the explosion in the data at every point in the ecosystem, including the Waco, right? You have a lot more sensors, you have a lot more cameras. Uh, you know, there may even be LIDAR at some point, um, you know, based on the autonomy stuff. So a lot of the quote, unquote, computing will happen at the edge will happen in the Waco, but there will be a need to ship, more KPIs, more macro, you know, metrics. And so on back to the, uh, back office to the cloud, to the data center, et cetera, for the, some of the insights and machine learning models to run on the back end as well. So that's one aspect. The other aspect is the media rich content that we're consuming. It's almost like no matter how fat the pie, the, the media content, you know, it could figure this out a weight, see that up a few years ago, we had much thinner, um, broadband connections at home. And we thought, you know, life was good, but lo and behold, with all the video games and media it's content that, you know, my kids are consuming no matter what I upgrade to, I still seem to have a problem in terms of the bandwidth. So those are the type of factors that will kick in and will drive some of the adoption zooming, able to solve for at the right, the right price point. And some of the other topics I mentioned earlier.

Speaker 4: 20:55

Great. So one thing which always intrigues me, it's like, you know, the cabs and the trucks, right. They're pretty fancy getting pretty fancy these days. And I'm the promote truck operator perspective, whether it's, you know, some backend and more, so the one who is driving it, if you ask, like, let's say a hundred people, a hundred truck drivers and you ask them, okay, what are some real challenges that you want to get solved for you? What would you, what would you think they say? Yeah. So, so there are certain challenges that have been

Speaker 3: 21:28

For awhile. I think the nuances have changed, but a lot of the core challenges remain when you look at the industry, there's a spread, right? There's a spectrum from the mom and pop type operators, family on operators to very large providers that have very large fleet, thousands of trucks operating in multiple industry segments and so on, so forth. So the challenges to a certain extent vary by subsegment. Uh, but there are some common themes. Safety is a big one. There's a lot of risk out there in terms of traffic, in terms of, uh, driving ability and so on, so forth. Um, so safety and managing risk is, is a key key driver, whether you're small or big, no matter what fleet efficiency, you know, miles per gallon streamline important because even, you know, uh, most of the trucks, you know, have fairly low, you know, miles per gallon in, you know, in general when you compare it to passenger cars and so on and so forth. And that makes sense because there are a lot bigger and carry a lot more weight. So even a small swing by percent in miles per year, and can have a huge impact to the bottom line. You know, I mentioned retention, which, uh, you know, retaining the top drivers and making sure that they're motivated. They felt they feel taken care of that they have, uh, the right care and feeding, if you will, on an ongoing basis is extremely important. So, so these are some while it's a highly technology enabled industry, when you really boil it down to what are the pain points? A lot of times they're more human related, they're more business related and technology can help alleviate some others and improve these metrics and improve the quality of life for our customers, which at the end of the day helps them operate their business in a more effective way.

Speaker 4: 23:33

That's great. Very well put. Well, I, uh, I hope the human element doesn't go away once, whether it's 10 years or 15 years or five years, whatever that number looks like, uh, for autonomous vehicles to kick in and human continues to play

Speaker 3: 23:46

A role in that on the, and this is probably one of my last questions here. Um, overall, I'm hearing that you're excited about five G and you know, of course you said, um, you know, you have to be more realistic contemporary excitement in terms of the availability and coverage you, I assume, are on the receiving end of the five G technology, right? It's, it's a factor that is an enabler for you. Or do you think a five G plays an integral part in overall, you know, how you operate your industry or in general, what would you ask the fives industry leaders to say, okay, this is from a trucking industry perspective. There are, these are the three things that I really want to make sure the five D functions properly for me to function properly. Yeah, that's a great question. Um, so yeah, so we would, you know, technologies like 5g, uh, I would say the industry is more, more consumer. Uh, we want to leverage it where it makes sense in provide richer user experiences, uh, improved use cases to our customers when it comes to requests of the five teen three, uh, it's. It comes down to, you know, ease of integration, you know, the coverage, you know, if it's body coverage, then you got to wonder, you know, uh, what's the point basically in an industry where you're always on the move, if you will, and you can go go from, you know, really good coverage to really bad coverage, pretty quickly cost, you know, the cost of adoption. So to me, these are the primary drivers, you know, the easier the industry can make it for us to consume at the right price point. That helps. That's great. Now to close on this, um, you said earlier that some analysts say talking industries that aren't two years away from adopting 5g. What's your take on that? I think that the beginning of the curve adoption curve, uh, as you know, adoption is not a bullying event, you know, yesterday in this field and habit, and today everybody has it. So I don't think that's going to happen. It'll start to get there, but you know, like anything on a curve, you know, there is a time element there as well, and we have to be realistic about that. All right. Thank you, dr. Shane, it was a great conversation and, uh, really appreciate all your insights, uh, loved your way of explaining, uh, what the technology, how the technology is influenced by use benefits, accuracy, trust, and realtime performance. Those are really some great points and the human element continues to stay. I hope thanks again for your time. Thanks for the pleasure.

Speaker 2: 26:25

So the verdict from the expert is that five G along with AI will be a key enabler in improving the trucking operations and the life of a truck driver. But the adoption code will realistically start in a couple of years. Thanks dr. Rasheen for explaining the challenges that remain to be solved and critical areas, 5g industry keep in mind to solve problems of the transportation industry. Thanks everyone for listening. I hope you liked this episode. Don't forget to subscribe to the alignment podcast on your favorite platform. Reach out to me@asheeshdotchainatkairosbelts.com with feedback and suggestions, or look me up on LinkedIn until next time stay safe.

Speaker 1: 27:08

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