exploring michigan’s emerging tech sectors … · exploring michigan’s emerging tech sectors...

SUMMER 2015 $3.99

E X P L O R I N G M I C H I G A N ’ S E M E R G I N G T E C H S E C T O R S

BABY YOU CANBABY YOU CANDRIVE MY CARCHARTING A NEW COURSE IN AUTOMATED VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY

A publication of

E X P L O R I N G M I C H I G A N ’ S E M E R G I N G T E C H S E C T O R S

SUMMER 2015

E X P L O R I N G M I C H I G A N ’ S E M E R G I N G T E C H S E C T O R SE X P L O R I N G M I C H I G A N ’ S E M E R G I N G T E C H S E C T O R S

+ Continental’s role in automated driving

+ Auto expert sees a tech revolution

+ Off-the-beaten path summer adventures

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WHERE TECHNOLOGY MEETS LIFESTYLE

features

20 people profile CAR’s director shares views on the auto tech revolution

22 business profile Continental Corporation is on the road to automated driving

26 focus on technology Autonomous vehicles are charting a new course

32 lifestyle Summertime adventures

departments

4 editor’s letter

6 automation alley update Views and news from Automation Alley

10 metro retro Booting up … robots through the years

12 health+tech Robo co-workers; life-saving alternative to open-heart surgery; a new take on wearable devices

14 tech+design Emulating ants

16 newsmakers Aspiring student entrepreneurs; Elio Motors’ three-wheel innovation; OUWB’s first graduates

18 education kaleidoscope U-M’s entrepreneurship program

40 expert outlook Four steps to balancing work and home life

42 making the scene Capturing tech events

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TECH NEWSwww.xologymagazine.com

SUMMER 2015

VOLUME 9, NUMBER 3

Doug Moore, the pioneer and founder

of Westborn Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram,

has been serving the fine community of

Dearborn for over 31 years. Westborn

Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram now has

its third generation working at the

dealership and learning the business to

take it to the next level.

When Mr. Moore started in the business

over 45 years ago, Lyndon Johnson

returned to power after a landslide

victory. It was also the year the Beatles

took the world and America by storm

and Beatlemania went into overdrive as

they released a series of number-one hits,

including “I Want to Hold Your Hand”

and “All My Loving.” Other British groups

also found success, including the Rolling

Stones and the Animals. Together, with

the American talent of the Supremes and

Bob Dylan, many say this was one of the

greatest years for music in the last century.

Also, one young, loud, talented boxer by the

name of Cassius Clay won the boxing world

heavyweight championship from Sonny

Liston. Sony also introduced the first VCR

Home Video Recorder.

Westborn Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram has

stood the test of time and has witnessed

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happened in this great country. Not only

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Ram stood the test of time, they are still

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Westborn Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram looks

forward to serving the great community of

Dearborn for another 31 years to come.

THE WESTB ORN

STORY

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4 SUMMER 2015 • X-OLOGY

www.xologymagazine.com

The topic of autonomous vehicles grabs the attention of more than just car en-thusiasts and techies. Most of us want

to know what the future of driving will look and feel like as we regularly hear about com-panies experimenting with self-driving cars.

The summer issue of X-OLOGY Magazine takes a close-up look at autonomous ve-hicles, including what we can expect to be driving in the not-so-distant future. Writer Michael Wayland presents the remarkable technologies (think seamless communica-tion, 3D navigation, cameras, sensors and radar) that will forever change the dynamics of sitting behind the wheel — and the future possibility of no longer even having to sit be-hind the wheel.

We also get a first-hand account of what it’s like to be an autonomous vehicle passenger, thanks to writer Henry Payne, who took a ride in Google’s autonomous Lexus 450h last summer. Don’t let his reference to “The Exorcist” scare you away from this eye-opening report that weighs some of the pros and cons of au-tonomous cars and takes a look at where the industry is headed.

Our People Profile features Richard Wallace of the Center for Automotive Research, whose work as director of transportation systems analysis is particularly focused on safety aspects of self-driving vehicles. He believes the autonomous vehicle industry should strive to eliminate traffic fatalities altogether.

Similarly, Continental Corporation, featured in our Business Profile, says its commitment to autonomous vehicles is driven by the company’s Vision Zero concept, which is based on creat-ing systems with the ultimate goal of eliminating driving accidents and fatalities.

Our Education Kaleidoscope features the University of Michigan School of Information’s Entrepreneurship Program, designed to make sure each student participates in a “passion-led, self-driven innovation project,” according to Nancy Benovich Gilby, the program’s director. Gilby wants her students to get involved in any type of work that involves innovation, regardless of their ultimate career choice. Students of the program can’t say enough about the impact it has had on their ability to develop and carry out ideas.

And, speaking of ideas, writer Susan Pollack has plenty of unique travel destinations in her Lifestyle article, where she shares off-the-beaten-path adventures that will take your summer to a whole new level of fun.

As always, we invite you to share your thoughts about this issue of X-OLOGY Magazine, and we ask you to send your ideas for future articles. We love to get your feedback.

Jane Racey [email protected]

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EDITORIAL

EDITOR | Jane Racey Gleeson

EDITORIAL ADVISORS Ken RogersErin Sommerville

COPY EDITORSNicole KampeErin Sommerville

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Julie Baumkel Henry PaynePeter Haapaniemi Susan R. PollackPam Houghton Michael WaylandNicole Kampe Ilene Wolff

CREATIVE

CREATIVE DIRECTOR | Alex Lumelsky

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERSJeff Kowalsky Max WedgeSusan R. Pollack

PRODUCTION | SKY Creative

PUBLISHING

PUBLISHED BY RDE ENTERPRISES INC.Publisher | R. David Eick

PRINTED BY GRAPHICS EASTAccount Executive | Chuck Rymal

ADVERTISING

MANAGING DIRECTOR, SALES AND MARKETING | R. David Eick

ACCOUNT MANAGERSScott CooperGreg “Porky” Campbell

INTERNAL ACCOUNT MANAGERJoseph P. Pietrangeli

FOR ADVERTISING CONTACT: 248.231.8067 or [email protected]

X-OLOGY IS A QUARTERLY MAGAZINE PUBLISHED FOR AUTOMATION ALLEY. THE MISSION OF X-OLOGY IS TO UNCOVER THE MOST SUR-PRISING AND RESONANT STORIES ABOUT THE PEOPLE, COMPANIES, TECHNOLOGIES AND IDEAS THAT ARE TRANSFORMING SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN. THE PUBLICATION IS DISTRIBUTED TO 20,000 IN 8 COUN-TIES IN SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN AND THE CITY OF DETROIT. FOR SUB-SCRIPTIONS, PLEASE CALL 248-231-8067.

ALL CONTENT HEREIN IS THE PROPERTY OF RDE ENTERPRISES, INC., AND CANNOT BE COPIED, REPRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED OR REPUBLISHED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF RDE ENTERPRISES.

POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO X-OLOGY MAGAZINE, P.O. BOX 38, BIRMINGHAM, MI 48012

X-OLOGY • SUMMER 2015 5

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Endless Opportunities. Countless Possibilities.

With more than 27 million square feet of office space and over seven million square feet of retail and industrial space – the City of Southfield is Michigan’s leading business center. Southfield is home to more than 9,000 businesses including over 100 “Fortune 500” companies. Why do so many companies chose Southfield? Simply put, because Southfield offers businesses advantages that others cities don’t. From our central location and world-class office space to our advanced infrastructure – come see all that Southfield has offer your business! Also, be sure to download our free new ‘SpotSouthfield’ app today!

Call Southfield Business Development at (248) 796-4161 or visit www.cityofsouthfield.com to learn more about how we can help your business thrive!

Abdul Miah, co-founder and principal engineer at rankedHiRe, and Imran Raja, senior software engineer at MB Financial, were awarded the $5,000 grand prize at #hack4detroit, Automation Alley’s 24-hour hackathon to build a mobile application using the city of Detroit’s new Open Data Portal. Automation Alley held the event June 12-13 at Grand Circus Detroit.

The hackathon challenged participants to build an app to navigate family-friendly activities in the city of Detroit. The first place winners — Miah, of Novi, and Raja, of Canton — built a mobile app called Ride4Detroit that helps people discover, create and share bike routes in the city. The team’s app integrated existing bike paths to make users aware of existing issues and allow them to report new ones as they bike through Detroit.

“It was a fun and intense 24 hours that really got our brains working to come up with a solution that would help the city of Detroit,” says Miah.

“#hack4detroit was a tremendous success thanks to the hard work of Automation Alley,

Grand Circus and all of our talented partici-pants, who spent 24 hours creating mobile applications to benefit the citizens of Detroit. Automation Alley has and will continue to be a supporter of Detroit’s rebirth,” says Ken Rogers, Automation Alley’s executive direc-tor. “We continue to be extremely impressed with the diversity and level of technical talent our region has to offer, and that was on full display at #hack4detroit.”

The apps were judged by Beth Niblock, CIO of the City of Detroit; Sean Hurwitz, CEO of Pixo; Brian Balasia, CEO of Digerati; and Will McDowell, Business Analyst at Detroit Labs.

Event sponsors included the City of Detroit, Comcast Business, Delphix, Digerati, Detroit Labs, 5-hour Energy, Grand Circus Detroit, New Horizons Computer Learning Centers and Socrata.

Second-place winners included PishPosh.TV founders Ben Duell Fraser and Michael Evans, who is also a senior developer at Loveland Technologies. The third-place win-ner was Jonathan Werber, a developer at Nexient.

$5,000 awarded to winners of #hack4detroit, automation alley’s 24-hour hackathonWinning team’s app will be used to navigate family-friendly activities in the city of Detroit

From left: Will McDowell of Detroit Labs, Brian Balasia of Digerati, Imran Raja of MB Financial, Garlin Gilchrist II of Civic Community Engagement, Abdul Miah of rankedHiRe, Beth Niblock of the City of Detroit and Sean Hurwitz of Pixo.

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save the date: Automation Alley 15th Annual Technology’s Matchmaker for Business® Awards Gala to be held Oct. 2 at Royal Park Hotel

Plans are under way for Automation Alley’s biggest event of the year: the Annual Awards Gala. Join hundreds of the most influential leaders in business at the Royal Park Hotel in Rochester, Oct. 2 from 6 to 11 p.m., as Automation Alley recognizes the leaders and innovators of Southeast Michigan’s technology business community.

Awards will be given to the indi-viduals, companies and organiza-tions that are exploring new possi-bilities in emerging tech sectors and providing a creative vision for our re-gion’s growing technology economy. Keep an eye on automationalley.com to cast your vote this summer. Award categories include:

• Startup of the Year • Technology Company of the Year • Advanced Manufacturer of the Year• Member Company of the Year• Excellence in International Business • Outstanding Educational Initiative

New sponsorships are available this year, providing unique and exciting opportunities for companies to gain exposure and promote their brands.

Enjoy networking, dinner and cocktails with regional tech leaders, and stay for the after-party, featur-ing a cigar lounge and Michigan craft beer bar.

Tickets are $200 for Automation Alley members and $275 for non-members. Purchase a table of 10 for $1,750.

For sponsorship information, or to purchase tickets, visit automational-ley.com, call 248-457-3206 or email [email protected].

Coming Up at Automation AlleySAVE THE DATE

Summer Member Networking Aug. 12, 5:30-8 p.m. @ Central Michigan University, Office of Detroit Outreach

Automation Alley’s 15th Annual Technology’s Matchmaker for Business Awards Gala Oct. 2, 6-11 p.m. @ Royal Park Hotel, Rochester, Mich.

Fall Member Networking Oct. 22, 5:30-8 p.m. @ Pratt & Miller Engineering, New Hudson, Mich.

Technology Industry Outlook Feb. 22, 2016 @ Detroit Institute of Arts

automationalley.com

AutoAlley_X-OLOGY_2HalfPageHorz.indd 1 6/3/2015 9:31:39 AM

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automation alley leads two panel discussions at THE BIG M

This June, THE BIG M drew thousands of the most cre-ative thinkers in manufactur-ing from across the globe to showcase the latest advanced manufacturing technologies Southeast Michigan has to offer. As a proud supporter of SME’s three-day international manufacturing convergence at the Cobo Center in Detroit, Au-tomation Alley led two panel discussions at THE BIG M.

The panels featured leaders from Automation Alley mem-ber companies weighing in on the topics of cloud computing and modeling, simulation and visualization (MSV). The pan-els were led by Alex Violassi, director of the Automation Alley’s Technology Center, and Karol Friedman, Automation Alley’s director of talent de-velopment.

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about automation alley® Automation Alley is a technology business association and business accelerator dedicated to growing the economy of Southeast Michigan and enhancing the region’s reputation around the world. Automation Alley offers talent and business development programs and matchmaking services to tech-focused businesses of all sizes — from startups to large corporations — to help them grow and prosper.

Since its founding in 1999, Automation Alley’s membership has grown to include nearly 1,000 businesses, educational institutions, government entities and nonprofit organizations from the city of Detroit and the surrounding eight-county region. Automation Alley provides a variety of exclusive benefits to its members to help them succeed, including networking opportunities, meeting space and public relations tools. Automation Alley also serves the general business community in five key areas: entrepreneurial services, talent development, international business services, emerging technologies, and defense and manufacturing.

Automation Alley collaborates with regional partners to provide its members and clients with the best business resources available, to drive local economic growth, and to positively influence the stories being told around the globe about the people and businesses of Greater Detroit.

Clockwise from top: Ken Rogers of Automa-tion Alley with students attending THE BIG M; Rich Solti of PROLIM Corporation and Bill Bone of Aras; Chad Sibley of Merrill Tech-nologies Group, David Darbyshire of DASI Solutions and Wayne Dula of Loc Performance Products; Bill Bone of Aras, Alex Violassi of Automation Alley, Jerry Foster of Plex and Rich Solti of PROLIM Corporation.


Automation Alley Foundation MembersAutomation Alley would like to

thank its Foundation Members

for their regional leadership and

support in contributing to the

success of the organization.

All CoveredAltairArab American and

Chaldean CouncilBaker CollegeBlue Cross Blue ShieldButzel LongCentral Michigan UniversityCity of SouthfieldCity of TroyCrain’s Detroit BusinessDelphi CorporationDetroit Manufacturing SystemsDetroit Regional ChamberDTE EnergyFCA US LLCGeneral MotorsGlobalAutoIndustry.comGoodwill IndustriesGrand CircusHR Pro/BeneProJust Energy CorporationKeaton Publishing GroupKelly Services, Inc.Kettering UniversityLawrence Technological UniversityMacomb Community CollegeMacomb County GovernmentMacomb DailyMichigan Economic

Development CorporationMicrosoftNew Horizons Computer

Learning CentersOakland Community CollegeOakland CountyOakland County Workforce

Development BoardOakland PressOakland UniversityPlante MoranQuality MetalcraftRave ComputerSalesforce.comSiemens PLMSMARTStrategic Staffing SolutionsThe Resource Network, Inc.Troy Michigan Works!U.S. Army TARDEC/NACUHY Advisors


In the 2012 movie, “Robot & Frank,” an ag-ing man living alone ultimately befriends a domestic robot his son provides him as a

companion.In a more recent flick, “Ex Machina,” the

main character has the tables disastrously turned on him when a female robot he cre-ated seeks freedom.

Author Martin Ford, an international expert on technology, expects the new economy to evolve in an even more complex way as ex-plained in his 2015 book, “Rise of the Robots.”

Ford believes the introduction of robots to do the mundane tasks of low-skill careers may displace human workers, first for low-skill jobs in the fast food and retail industries and, ultimately, for more highly skilled jobs.

While such assessments may sound far-fetched, futurists say the technological revo-lution in artificial intelligence is evolving rap-idly — for better or worse.

The following brief history of robotics illustrates how humans have progressed in their relationships with “thinking ma-chines” over the years.

77-100 B.C.: In 1901, a diver near Crete finds the remnants of a 2,000-year-old me-chanical computer that calculated the posi-

tion of the sun, the moon and other celestial bodies. “The Antikythera Device” is thought to be of Greek origin.

278-212 B.C.: Mathematician Archime-des invents mechanical systems still used in robotics today.

10-70 A.D.: A mathematician, physicist and engineer known as “The Hero of Alexan-dria” writes a book titled “Automata,” which describes a variety of automatic devices, in-cluding an odometer, a wind-powered organ, animated statues and the forefather of mod-ern steam engines, the Aeolipile.

1709: “The Duck,” a mechanical machine that flaps its wings, eats and excretes, is creat-ed by Frenchman Jacques de Vaucanson. Each wing contains more than 400 moving parts.

1865/1885: First the Steam Man, then the Electric Man are created by John Brain-erd and Frank Reade, Jr., respectively, to help humans with industrial chores.

1921: The word “robot” is introduced by writer Karel Capek. In his play “R.U.R.” (Ros-sum’s Universal Robots), the robots revolt against the company and the humans who created them.

1924: R.U.R. is shown in Tokyo, and many Japanese become intrigued by robots. Japanese

literature, culture and evolving technology soon reflect it. The play also catches fire in America and fuels the growth of American pulp science fiction magazines like “Amazing Stories.”

1939: Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov tires of the portrayal of robots as evil or no-ble, publishing stories that highlight the ro-bot’s abilities as tools to benefit mankind. He also establishes the Three Fundamental Laws of Robotics.

1948: Said to be the first two robots, El-mer and Elsie are created by W. Grey Walter.

1956: Unimation, the first and, for years, largest robotics company in the world, is launched, spearheading the growth of indus-trial robotics. One of its founders, Joseph Engel-berger, is known as the “father of robotics.”

1961: The first industrial robot, Unimate, joined the assembly line at a General Motors plant to work with heated die-casting machines.

1968: Two innovators at the University of South Carolina invent the first computer-controlled walking machine. The Stanford Research Institute builds Shakey, a mobile robot with a vision system, controlled by a room-sized computer.

1986-1996: Honda creates numerous gen-erations of Asimo, the world’s most advanced bipedal humanoid robot. Asimo, short for Ad-vanced Step in Innovative Mobility, is coordinat-ed, agile and designed as a human helpmate.

1998: Dr. Cynthia Breazeal creates Kismet, the first robot designed to create meaningful social interaction with humans.

2000: Sony Dream Robots are unveiled. The robots can recognize 10 different faces, express emotion through speech and body language and walk on flat and irregular surfaces.

2001: iRobot Packbots search the rubble of the World Trade Center devastation and are used in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq.

2002: iRobot releases the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner.

2010: Japan’s Mitsubishi Research Insti-tute believes the market for household ro-bots will grow in earnest, with predictions of a $70 billion market.

2020: The Intelligent Service robot indus-try is expected to grow to the same size as that of the IT industry in 2005. It is predicted that each household in the world will own at least one robot by 2020. SOURCE: ROBOTSHOP LEARNING CENTER


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booting up … robots through the years

BY JULIE BAUMKEL

booting up …

tion of the sun, the moon and other celestial

booting up … robots through the yearsbooting up …

Clockwise from left: The Antikythera Device; Honda’s Asimo; iRobot Packbot

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a new take on wearable devices The next generation of wearable health tech is all about collect-ing personal information — a patient’s heart rhythm, for example — and sending it directly to a healthcare professional (in this case via a remote stethoscope). According to ABI Research, a technology market intelligence company, annual wearable wireless medical device sales will reach more than 100 million devices by 2016.

Devices that monitor personal behavior will be getting more and more sophisticated. There’s the AIRO wristband, which uses a built-in spectrometer to detect nutrients released into your bloodstream as they are broken down during and after your meals. And a device being de-veloped by TellSpec will analyze the chemical composition of food in real time to let you know on your smartphone exactly what’s in that hamburger or brownie sundae.

AiQ’s BioMan t-shirt has ribbed “smart sleeves” that measure your heart rate, respiration rate and skin temperature. The shirt can also measure electrophysiological signals such as EKG, electroencephalog-raphy (EEG) or electromyography (EMG).

Feet are getting into the act, too, with Moticon, a wireless sen-sor insole that can be used in any shoe to measure the distribution and motion parameters for patients and athletes, turning your shoe into a wireless performance tracking system. The sensor insole is fitted with firmware that communicates with PC software via a USB radio stick.

Bluetooth technology is key in systems such as 9Solutions IPCS, which uses it to track elderly patients’ movements and send health measurements to caregivers. Body-Tel uses the same Bluetooth technology to al-low patients to wirelessly send measured body values to their healthcare providers.

robo co-workers Medical robots are changing the face of healthcare in dramatic ways, from making hospital opera-tions more efficient to helping doc-tors perform lifesaving procedures.

The RP-VITA Remote Presence Robot, for example, is a device that combines iRobot’s autono-mous navigation and mobility

with InTouch Health’s telemedicine technology. The device is a mobile cart with a two-way video screen and medical monitoring equipment. The robot maneuvers through hos-

pital halls to check on patients in different rooms and manage

their individual charts and vital signs, all without direct human intervention.

The Aethon TUG is an au-tomated system that helps

move supplies — medication, food and linens, for example — from one space to another, allowing healthcare workers to spend more time with patients. The robot works 24/7, maneuvering hospital halls and riding elevators as it delivers supplies.

Free-roaming robots called microbots are being man-ufactured by a number of companies to perform precise tasks inside the human body. Often, these robots enable minimally invasive procedures, such as removing plaque from arteries. One of the more well-known medical ro-bots is the da Vinci Surgical System, which enables a surgeon to operate through a few small incisions. The da Vinci System features a magnified 3D high-definition vi-sion system and tiny wristed instruments that bend and rotate for precise movements.

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Medical robots are changing the face of healthcare in dramatic ways, from making hospital operations more efficient to helping doctors perform lifesaving procedures.

Robot, for example, is a device that combines iRobot’s autonomous navigation and mobility

with InTouch Health’s telemedicine technology. The device is a mobile cart with a two-way video screen and medical monitoring equipment. The robot maneuvers through hos

pital halls to check on patients in

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INTOUCH HEALTH

life-saving alternative to open-heart surgeryAs many as 300,000 people in the United States are diagnosed each year with severe aortic stenosis, a condition in which the aortic valve does not open fully, decreasing blood flow from the heart to the body. Aortic stenosis may be related to age, a buildup of calcium deposits that causes narrowing, radiation therapy, medications or a history of high cholesterol. Although open-heart surgery is the treatment of choice for aortic stenosis, approximately one-third of patients with this disease are not candidates for the surgery, but they may benefit from minimally invasive heart valve replacement op-tions, such as the Sapien transcatheter aortic valve.

This life-saving alternative to open-heart surgery is manufactured by Edwards Life Sciences of Irvine, CA. The Sapien valve, made of bovine tissue within a collapsible stainless-steel stent, is steered to the aorta along the femoral artery by a balloon catheter inserted through a small incision in the leg. Once guided into place in the aorta, the implant is expanded to full size, immediately replacing the function of the patient’s damaged valve.

uses it to track elderly patients’ movements and send health measurements to caregivers. Body-Tel uses the same Bluetooth technology to al-low patients to wirelessly send measured body values to their healthcare providers.

This life-saving alternative to open-heart surgery is manufactured by Edwards Life Sciences of Irvine, CA. The Sapien valve, made of bovine tissue within a collapsible stainless-steel stent, is steered to the aorta along the femoral artery by a balloon catheter inserted through a small incision in the leg. Once guided into place in the aorta, the implant is expanded to full size, immediately replacing the function of the patient’s damaged valve.

a new take on wearable devices The next generation of wearable health tech is all about collect-ing personal information — a patient’s heart rhythm, for example — and sending it directly to a healthcare professional (in this case via a remote stethoscope). According to ABI Research, a technology market intelligence company, annual wearable wireless medical device

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Ants perform some pretty incredible tasks — from carrying up to 5,000 times their own body weight (ac-

cording to researchers at Ohio State Uni-versity as reported in the Journal of Bio-mechanics) to assembling themselves into rafts that can float for weeks, saving an entire colony from drowning. Ants are well known for their highly organized colonies and nests, which often house millions and where teamwork is key to their ability to accomplish extraordinary feats.

These characteristics are behind a Ger-man engineering company’s creation of BionicANTs — bionic artificial prototypes that provide a technology platform mir-

roring the autonomous decision-making and cooperative behavior of real ants. The company, Festo, has created BionicANTs using complex control algorithms that en-able ants to make individual decisions re-lated to a common purpose. Festo’s project aims to create intelligent agents that can work efficiently in factories by adapting to a variety of needs.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER“With this technology platform, we looked at the principle of division of labor. Ants are the archetype of diligent, industrious insects. Each ant is part of an immense or-ganization. The artificial ants demonstrate

how optimization strategies for efficient work processes can be realized by means of autonomous, cooperative behavior,” says Andrea Ziomek, Festo’s manager of corporate communications, Americas. “Bi-onics serves as an ideal platform for the development of new technologies, manu-facturing methods, products and product ideas, and for testing their market rel-evance.”

“Ants live in large colonies with a clear hierarchy and firmly established rules,” says Dr.-Ing. Heinrich Frontzek, head of corporate communication and future concepts at Festo. “Each ant in a colony knows what task it has to carry out. They


BY JANE GLEESON

bionicANTs bring the best of the ant world

can thus perform tasks together that an indi-vidual ant could not manage alone.”

UNIQUELY DESIGNEDThe plastic body of the BionicANT is 3D-printed with electronic circuits placed on top. Six legs and grippers are made from ceramic actuators that enable it to quickly bend as necessary to perform a task with precision.

Festo’s BionicANTs use piezo technology, for example, for the movement of the grippers on the artificial ants’ heads and also of their legs. “This new application of piezo technology un-derscores the advantages of the precise, rapid control of piezo elements,” says Ziomek. “They are energy-efficient, practically wear-free and

require only a very small installation space.”A stereo camera in each ant’s head (where

eyes would normally be) helps it navigate and identify objects that can be grabbed with grippers. Floor sensors also help the BionicANTs get a sense of their surroundings while they use a wireless network to communicate with one another. The battery-powered ants charge their batteries by moving their metal antennae against electric rails. Underneath each thorax area is an optical sensor similar to that of a computer’s mouse.

The company says the BionicANT technol-ogy shows promise of working in factories; for example, cleaning up workroom floors during off hours.

IN GOOD COMPANYThe bionic ants were recently presented at Germany’s Hanover Messe — the world’s biggest industrial technology trade fair — along with Festo’s other creations that include eMotionButterflies (ultra-lightweight flying objects with col-lective behavior) and FlexShapeGripper (a gripping device modeled after the chame-leon’s tongue).

Festo has also created robotic kangaroos that bounce on flexible blades, bionic el-ephant’s trunk that can be trained to pick up objects and mock penguins that can swim or float through the air to monitor their environ-ment.


bionicANTs bring the best of the ant world


aspiring student entrepreneursMore than $9,000 was awarded at the finals of the Macomb Community College Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s inaugural student entrepreneur pitch competition. During the April event, eight finalists cho-sen from a field of more than 50 students pitched ideas to a panel of judges.

First-place winner Naznin Aktar plans to open a shop that sells clothing and household goods primar-ily to immigrant women, as well as to provide free services such as English language lessons and as-sistance with the social studies portion of the U.S. citizenship exam. Aktar says her business idea was based in part on her personal immigrant experience. She is studying chemical engineering and food sci-ence at Macomb.

Second prize was awarded to Teron C. Varner for his Devine C.U.T.S. business concept. C.U.T.S. is a mobile sa-lon that would offer services such as haircuts, manicures and pedicures from a vehicle that would go directly to the customer. Varner is studying global supply chain manage-ment at Macomb.

Third-prize winner Lauren Williams is a business ma-jor who is working to establish The Tomorrow Project, a nonprofit organization to educate high school and college students about depression, suicide and mental health through school presentations.

The $5,000 first-place prize was donated by com-petition sponsor First State Bank. Second- and third-place prizes of $3,000 and $1,000 were provided by Macomb Community College.

The center was established in fall 2014 as a re-source for both students and community members for entrepreneurship education and training, mentorship for startups and existing small business, and access to capital. The competition’s goal is to introduce students to the world and process of entrepreneurship.

Automobile entrepreneur Paul Elio is on to something big — or small, depending on your perspective. His Troy, MI-based company, Elio Motors Inc., is getting na-tional recognition for the high-mileage, low-cost Elio P4 vehicle. And fans got a detailed look at the car’s innovative style at Smithsonian magazine’s Future is Here Festival in Washington, D.C., in May. The Elio was on display at the four-day annual event that highlights advanced thinking in science, technology and engineering.

Elio Motors has taken a revolutionary approach to manufacturing the three-wheeled Elio, which gets up to 84 mpg without compromising amenities — power windows, power door locks and air conditioning — or safety considerations, including multiple air bags and an aerody-namic, enclosed vehicle body. Best of all, the car is expected to sell for just $6,800.

The lightweight vehicle (weighing in at 1,228-pounds versus 2,400 pounds for most entry-level vehicles) is engineered to handle all weather conditions, including

snow. Measuring 160 inches long with a 110-inch wheelbase, the company says the vehicle was designed to fit a six-foot-one-inch, 220-pound person. The car has room for two passengers, with the second passenger sitting behind the driver.

Elio Motors’ mission is: “To provide a fun-to-drive, super economical personal transportation alternative, based on a list of consumer-focused ‘must-haves’ that keep our vehicles affordable, safe and environmentally friendly.”

The company says it’s dedicated to cre-ating American jobs and boosting manu-facturing in the United States. The Elio factory, a former General Motors facility in Shreveport, LA, is expected to employ 1,500 workers. Plus, the vehicle is engi-neered to use more than 90 percent North American content, creating another 1,500 jobs at its supplier partner companies.

The Elio is attracting attention, with thousands of perspective buyers on the vehicle waiting list. The company esti-mates production in the first half of 2016.

three-wheelin’ innovation

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Naznin Aktar of Warren, first-place winner of Macomb Community College Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s first-ever student entrepreneur pitch competition; second-place winner Teron C. Varner of Shelby Township; third-place and audience choice award winner Lauren Williams of Chesterfield.

Forty-seven students became the first graduates of Oakland University William Beaumont (OUWB) School of Medicine in a commencement ceremony held May 15.

Members of OUWB’s charter class were selected from more than 3,200 applicants nationwide when the school opened in 2011 as Michigan’s first new allopathic medical school in nearly 50 years. OUWB emphasizes holistic physician develop-

ment, providing a liberal arts medical education grounded in evidence-based medical science.

The graduates have been placed in residencies in more than a dozen specialty areas at health systems in Michigan and throughout the coun-try. Medical school partner Beaumont Health accepted 14 OUWB students as residents.

charter class of OUWB graduates


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Engineer a Brighter Future

Architecture & Design | Arts & Sciences | Engineering | Management


When Nancy Benovich Gilby was hired to lead the University of Michigan School of Information’s

Entrepreneurship Program in June 2014, her “big, hairy, audacious goal” was to make sure each student participated in a “passion-led, self-driven innovation project.”

It seems Gilby, who received both a bach-elor’s and master’s degree in computer en-gineering from U-M, is succeeding. Students from the school’s Master of Science in Infor-mation (MSI) and Master of Health Informat-ics programs, and the newly formed Bachelor of Science in Information (BSI) program, are striking out on their own, taking Nancy’s pre-scription for successful risk-taking to heart.

“I try to get the students into the mindset of their target customers so they can really experience what it is like to do some type of

innovation work no matter where they go,” says Gilby, who has led or co-founded 10 startup companies. “If you are passionate about something and go about it in the right way, you can find a way to add value and have impact,” whether as an entrepreneur or em-ployee of a business or nonprofit organization.

Though students from other schools at U-M may participate in the campus-wide Entrepreneurship Program, Gilby is tailoring curriculum to the School of Information’s unique focus: the intersection of people, technology and society. While undergraduate students may take entrepreneurship classes for academic credit through the School of In-formation and participate in learning events outside the classroom, participation at the graduate level has been extracurricular, though academic classes are in development.

SHEDDING LIGHT ON THE PROCESS“The entrepreneurship process was such a black box until Nancy came in,” says Mas-ter of Science in Information student Kristen Sheppard, 26. “Nancy shed a lot of light on how to navigate, negotiate, present and pitch an idea that is compelling.”

There is no shortage of events for students to navigate, negotiate, present and pitch ideas. The New York Innovation Trek was designed with that in mind. The first one took place in October 2013 and the next a year later.

The Trek attracts 25-30 students from U-M who work in teams on passion-led projects. To prepare, they work under the tutelage of entrepreneurship mentors, who guide them through a “customer discovery” process, a touchstone of the program that requires them to gather data from customer inter-

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views. Listening with empathy and recording customer responses is key, before and after the solution is crafted.

“The program teaches you that if you have an idea, you have to go out and value it. You want to make sure the problem is something a lot of people have, and the solution is some-thing they want,” says Bachelor of Science in Information student Jeffery Zhang, 21.

At the Trek, students pitch their customer-vetted ideas to executives from tech compa-nies — such as Google, Yahoo and Tumblr — and investors, who give students feedback on the potential of their real-world solutions.

The Trek inspired MSI student Sheppard and her team members to create The Broke App out of a shared passion for financial literacy. Though the team considered ap-proaches to several financial challenges, they settled on a solution that helps col-lege students and young adults manage spending habits.

“Through customer interviews, we learned that a lot of students realized they had to control their spending, especially when they were having ‘Oh, crap’ moments like, ‘Did I save enough for rent or books?’ As we went through the Trek, we continued to adapt [the app] based on college student feedback.”

This summer, Gilby will mentor Sheppard and another team member while they work on coding the app.

Whether Sheppard starts her own business or joins “a small team within a company that is driving change and impact,” the program is preparing her to handle uncertainty.

“Part of entrepreneurship is learning to take risks and being okay with failure,” says Sheppard, who hails from Midland, MI. How-ever, when something “doesn’t work out,” she doesn’t view it as failure. “I see it as be-ing able to say, ‘So this idea didn’t work. Let’s adapt and expand in a different way.’”

METHOD TO THE MADNESSZhang, the BSI student, came up with an idea for a video game app that encourages online

and in-person socializing, but “fleshed it out through Nancy’s class SI363: Busting Myths and Pursuing Innovations with Mobile Apps.” Zhang received help from two other students, one from the School of Information, the other from U-M’s engineering school.

“The customer discovery, research and

pitching were done as part of a class exercise, but the actual conception of the application was all done outside of class,” Zhang says.

Inspired by his own passion for the “in-credibly social aspect” of online video games, the app, GrubQuest, rewards game-winning players with restaurant coupons that can only be redeemed in groups.

“The idea from a business perspective was to bring a full table to the restaurant, and from a personal perspective, to promote

social interaction and inhibit personal con-sumption. It’s not as much fun to eat alone as it is with friends.”

Talking to potential customers — college students and business owners — and ask-ing for feedback on his ideas got him out of his comfort zone. But it was a good exercise:

Zhang understands that to be a successful entrepreneur, “You have to hustle.”

He plans to launch the app in the fall with the other two members of his team. “This program taught me the right way to do things,” says Zhang, who was born in Ann Arbor but spent his teen years in Shanghai. “There’s a method to the madness, to the work that you have to put in over an ex-tended period of time, and this program is the ladder up for that.”

LEADING WITH PASSION

U-M Master of Science in Information student and Chicago native Michael Collins, who has a master’s degree in human resources and worked as an assistant computer network administrator for the Navy, led his Trek project with a passion for both human resources and information technology.

The Innovation Trek in New York, where students from U-M pitch customer-vetted ideas to technology executives and investors, provided the framework for his product, Incearch, a recruitment tool for IT professionals.

As required for the Trek, Collins and his team engaged in customer discovery, a two-fold process where potential users are interviewed before and after a solution is crafted. Collins and his team zeroed in on two HR recruitment challenges: sorting through thou-sands of resumes that arrive via job boards and finding candidates with job-appropriate skills on LinkedIn. “Recruiters can’t tell if the person is really qualified,” says Collins of a process prone to time-wasting emails and phone screenings.

The solution, Incearch, combines financial incentives with crowd-sourcing techniques and a large referral network to identify the most qualified candidates. The attraction for users: “Less money spent on recruitment and better ROI,” says Collins, who also worked as an IT headhunter. “I saw how companies struggled.”

“I’m really passionate about entrepreneurship,” he says. The product is in the incubator stage, which provides Collins and his team free office space, access to mentors and resourc-es such as website hosting services to help them accelerate the growth of their startup.

“There are two things Nancy (Nancy Benovich Gilby, Ehrenberg Director of Entrepreneurship, University of Michigan School of Information) brought home with this pro-gram,” Collins says. “The first is having a framework to understand if you have a viable idea. There’s a process and a way to manage entrepreneurship to improve your odds of success.

“The second is that in the development stage, products don’t have to be perfect before you ask for feedback. You want to get your product out there as fast as possible. Don’t hide it and keep it a secret. Let people poke holes in it so that you can fix it and make it better.”

“If you are passionate about something and go about it in the right way, you can find a way to add value and have impact.

– NANCY BENOVICH GILBY

Opposite page:Jeffrey Zhang (in back) with fellow U-M students at the New York Innova-tion Trek expedition.

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“Volunteering as a radio disc jockey at WCBN in Ann Arbor gives me a creative outlet beyond the automotive world. Often, I find that time on the radio sparks new ideas to share with CAR colleagues or clients.”

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X-OLOGY • SUMMER 2015 21 X-OLOGY • SUMMER 2015 21

Richard WallaceDirector, Transportation Systems Analysis, Center for Automotive Research (CAR)

WOW FACTORResearch conducted by Richard Wallace and colleagues at the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) suggests the automotive industry is on the brink of a new techno-logical revolution that will result in self-driving vehicles, and that any company that doesn’t adapt may find itself lagging behind and perhaps even worse as new com-petitors emerge. After all, the car companies of the last 50 years do not have to be those of the next 50, Wal-lace says. “When’s the last time you used Kodak film? We don’t buy mainframe computers from IBM anymore, either. We’re trying to avoid the dinosaur situation.”

PASSION FOR TECHWallace’s work focuses on the increasing reliance on communications technology for driving. “It took a while for the right technologies to exist to make it happen. Your vehicle had no connection to its surroundings other than the four tires on the road for pretty much the history of the automobile since Henry Ford. Now, you take self-driv-ing vehicles … they will have a technical performance that’s better than what you or I can do. Take safety — and those chain-reaction car crashes. If vehicles and the roadway were connected through communications and the head vehicle in a line of cars hits the brakes hard, I don’t have to wait for the chain reaction to happen and perhaps hit the car in front of me. I can get the message ‘hit the brakes now.’”

VIEW FROM THE TOP“We are the Motor City, and the auto industry is a critical component of the Michigan economy. As motor vehicle technology evolves, it really behooves us to lead in the area of self-driving vehicles. As a nonprofit, CAR is here to help with that mission.”

CORPORATE CLIMBWallace previously worked for the University of Michi-gan’s Transportation Research Institute and Intelligent Transportation Systems Lab before joining CAR. In those two roles, his worked focused on the evaluation of sev-eral of the first intelligent transportation systems field tests in Michigan.

CREDENTIALSWallace came to U-M to work on a doctoral degree in urban and regional planning after earning a master’s de-gree in technology and science policy at Georgia Institute of Technology and an undergraduate degree in chemi-cal engineering at Northwestern University. He is also a board member of the Intelligent Transportation Society of Michigan.

VOICE OF EXPERIENCE“My group within the Center for Automotive Research exists in large part to increase transportation safety. We have tremendous carnage on the roadway. We used to have in the range of 40,000 roadway fatalities every year in the U.S. Now, we’re down to 32,000 or so, but that’s still a lot. The No. 1 cause of death for people ages 4 to 33 is traffic fatalities. If self-driving vehicles work out the way we see it, they’re going to eliminate a lot of those fatalities. If you take a 70-mph crash to a 10-mph crash because you manage to pre-brake, you don’t get the fatalities. In Sweden, they call it Vision Zero; they’d like to get to zero traffic fatalities. We should set similar goals.”

— Interviewed by Ilene Wolff


continentalcorporation

on the road to automated driving

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That Chrysler prototype is an autonomous test vehicle from Continental Corporation, the Hanover, Germany-based auto supplier. These self-driving cars are experimental, but at the same time, they are tangible evidence that Continental’s automated driving tech-nology is rapidly entering the mainstream. In fact, the company plans to have these sys-tems on a number of the industry’s models in the near future.

In some ways, this may seem like a big leap for Continental, a 144-year-old company that makes everything from tires to brakes to chassis components. But for a decade or more, the com-pany has been expanding the use of electronic driving technologies. Indeed, Continental has made automated driving a key element in its business strategy, and Fast Company magazine named Continental one of the Top 10 companies to watch in the field. In short, the combination of sensors, com-puters and vehicles is in the company’s DNA.

“Automated driving is really just an evolu-tion of our active-safety technology,” says Ibro Muharemovic, the lead engineer with Conti-nental’s North American advanced engineer-ing group in Auburn Hills, MI. Rather than a radical new direction, he says, “It’s more of a final product of everything we do.”

THE ROAD TO AUTONOMOUS DRIVINGContinental’s focus on autonomous vehicles

is driven by the company’s overarching Vision Zero concept, which is basically creating systems that eliminate driving accidents and fatalities. The $37.9 billion company is the world’s second-largest auto supplier, and its work with safety and driving-assistance systems covers a lot of ground. Continental offers everything from electronic stability

control to tire-pressure monitoring systems and, increasingly, high-tech offerings such as radar-based adaptive cruise control and camera-based lane departure control systems. Just as important, the company is taking a holistic approach to such technologies under its ContiGuard system, which integrates and coordinates active- and passive-safety systems in vehicles.

Several years ago, Continental realized that these various efforts, when taken to-

gether, provided a foundation for automated driving, and the advanced engineering group began looking at the possibilities in earnest. The group is “kind of the skunkworks of the organization, and we work on technologies that are more ‘out there,’” says Muhare-movic. At the time, automated driving fit that description. So, as part of its exploration of

the technology, Continental joined a Carnegie Mellon University team to enter the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2007.

Sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), this event saw 11 autono-mous vehicles competing to navigate a course made up of urban and sub-urban roads in Victorville, CA. Draw-ing on Continental’s sensors and engineering expertise — as well as that of the university and partners GM, Google and Intel — the team won the challenge with a modified

Chevy Tahoe. In 2011, Continental partici-pated in a European Union-sponsored event called HaveIT, which looked at autonomous vehicles performing in congested traffic and areas where roadwork was being performed.

Those projects made it clear to the Con-tinental engineers that autonomous driving was on its way, and that the company could be a significant part of its evolution. “We de-cided to really push our technology to the max and see how it would perform in

They may not realize it, but many motorists on Interstate 75 just north of Detroit are getting a glimpse of the future:

a black Chrysler 300, essentially driving itself, that regularly plies the highway. There are people in the car, to be

sure. But they are engineers monitoring performance and providing human intervention only as a backup. The car

is watching the road, steering, controlling speed and maintaining a safe distance from other vehicles.

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everyday situations,” says Muharemovic. “What can we do? How far can we take it?”

To find out, Continental developed its own test vehicle, a modified Volkswagen Passat, and began driving it in Nevada, which was about to begin licensing autonomous driving test vehicles for its roads. “We drove roughly 6,500 miles in four weeks in fully automated mode,” Muhare-movic says. To gain more experience and log more miles, the team then took an automated drive from Las Vegas to Brimley, MI, the site of Continental’s testing grounds.

These efforts paid off in late 2012, when Con-tinental received the Nevada autonomous vehicle testing license, which bears the infinity symbol to represent the future. Continental was only the third company to receive it — after Google and Audi — and the first automotive supplier to do so.

The testing also provided something that was even more important in the long run: informa-tion. On the drive to northern Michigan, the Continental team collected a huge amount of data from the vehicle’s various cameras, radars and sensors. “We have the data recorded and stored on our server, so we can re-simulate that long drive now,” says Muharemovic. “Any time we make an update to our algorithms or func-tions, we just run it back through our simula-

tion on that data, and we can see how things improve or what else we need to do.”

FROM CONCEPT TO PRODUCTIONThese tests provided Continental with deep in-sights into automated driving, which enabled the company to develop a roadmap for ongoing development (see sidebar). Because it involves a broad range of the company’s technologies, the automated driving effort includes not only engineers in Auburn Hills, but also their coun-terparts in Japan and Germany. These locations work with common tools and platforms, allow-ing them to collaborate smoothly, but each is then charged with customizing technologies and offerings for their respective regions.

Overall, the move to automated driving has turned an important corner at Continental, as concepts have quickly become realities. Rather than looking for huge breakthroughs, says Mu-haremovic, “We’re now improving what we cur-rently have.” Three years ago, he says, the tech-nology seemed futuristic. But now, automated driving is a well-defined target with a clear de-livery date for the company. Says Muharemovic: “We have it, we’re driving it, we’re validating it; we’re trying to make it robust so that we can bring it to production as soon as possible.”

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Continental Corporation’s development roadmap out-lines three key phases of automated driving:

PARTIALLY AUTOMATED. Often called “traffic jam assist,” this level of automa-tion provides lateral and longitudinal control, but the driver must constantly moni-tor the system and be pre-pared to take over complete control at any moment.

HIGHLY AUTOMATED. Building on the first phase, the system provides more sophisticated control, so that the driver does not need to constantly monitor the system when it is active. The system detects when it is reaching the limits of its capabilities and, if neces-sary, will request that the driver take control within a certain time buffer. The sys-tem will not always be able to return the vehicle to the original low-risk state; the driver will need to do that.

FULLY AUTOMATED. The driver need not monitor the system, but the system will notify the driver to take over if needed. They system will be able to return the vehicle to the minimal risk condition by itself.

The first phase is essen-tially complete, and Continental’s systems are slated to be incorporated in a number of produc-tion models in 2016. The second phase is expected to be ready by 2020. And the third, expected in 2025, is where a lot of the com-pany’s work is currently focused, with engineers looking at detailed archi-tectures for high-speed communication, system redundancies to ensure reli-ability and, of course, mak-ing sure it is all affordable.

>>

A Continental engineer monitors performance as an automated test vehicle steers, controls speed and maintains a safe distance from other vehicles.

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CHARTING A

NEW COURSE DRIVERLESS VEHICLES

BY MICHAEL WAYLAND

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It could happen to any of us. You’re driving down Interstate 75 when

an accident occurs ahead of you. There’s limited time to react. You

panic, slam on the brakes and attempt to veer right, not noticing

that the SUV behind you is now beside you. You crash into it.

It’s a situation none of us wants to be in. One that in the fore-

seeable future could be a thing of the past, as highly automated

and autonomous vehicles bring the most profound revolution the

auto industry has experienced since Henry Ford’s introduction of

the assembly line in 1913. >>



Autonomous vehicles that have the ability to drive themselves are no longer fiction. They’re a reality. Companies from Detroit to Silicon Valley are testing them, with plans to introduce advanced semi-autonomous/automated features in the next year or so, and autonomous cars and trucks ready for public use as early as five to 10 years from now.

“It’s no longer a question of how feasible it is,” says automo-tive expert Jean-Francois Tremblay, EY (formerly Ernst & Young) Automotive and Transportation lead for the Americas. “It’s how quickly can the ecosystem welcome those vehicles?”

That ecosystem, our world, includes a litany of legislative, le-gal, financial and cultural speed bumps that are slowing down the release of autonomous vehicles — for now.

Autonomous vehicles use intricate systems of radars, cameras, sensors and advanced LIDARs — laser radar that measures dis-tance by illuminating a target with a laser and analyzing the re-flected light — to continuously provide data about the vehicle’s surroundings to processing systems with complex algorithms at speeds faster than our brains could ever possibly imagine.

Humans have five traditional senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Autonomous vehicles sense and analyze thou-sands of different scenarios in seconds, determining possibilities of possibilities with advanced algorithms, or sets of rules to be followed in calculations and other problem-solving operations.

“The algorithms are taking all of the sensor input and are constantly making evaluations of the path the vehicle is on and the path that everything else it sees around the vehicle is on,” says Jeffrey Owens, Delphi Automotive’s chief technology offi-cer and executive vice president. “It’s constantly making calcu-lations and evaluations of what to do if ‘x,’ ‘y’ or ‘z’ happens.”

So instead of slamming on the brakes and hitting the SUV beside you in the aforementioned accident, an autonomous ve-hicle would have known the safest, most appropriate scenario would have been steering left, where the driver next to you noticed the accident prior to you and had slowed down, giving you room to safely move over and stop.

Sound complex? It is. But possible. Delphi just completed a cross-country trip in an autonomous retrofitted Audi Q5 SUV called “Roadrunner” from San Francisco to New York in nine days. The vehicle, Owens says, surpassed expectations and drove in autonomous mode for 99 percent of the nearly 3,400-mile trip.

“This car was really an opportunity to put all of that technology on a vehicle and then look at the systems integration,” he says. “The system’s integration is one of the most difficult pieces here.”

TESTING, TESTING …Delphi, a leading global auto supplier, isn’t a car manufacturer and doesn’t want to be. It used the trip to show off its own technologies and collect about three terabytes, or 3 million megabytes (enough storage for 750,000 four-minute songs), of data to analyze and learn about the best-use cases for all of the technologies it’s developing and supplying to automakers.

The goal? Reduce the cost of the technologies used for au-tonomous vehicles to help bring highly automated cars and trucks to the masses as soon as possible.

“We’re going to continue to refine each of the individual sensors and look at how you can trade off between different kinds of sensors to make them cost effective,” says Owens, whose company is working on its ninth-generation radar.

Delphi is one of the leaders in the development of autono-mous vehicles, along with other suppliers like Continental Au-tomotive (see Business Profile, page 22); automakers such as General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Mercedes-Benz; and tech giant Google Inc.

Google has been one of the most open about its autono-mous vehicle development and testing since announcing its first prototype in 2010. The company most recently announced a new fleet of self-driving cars that will leave the test track this summer for real-world testing. Officials believe the vehicles could save thousands of lives a year.

“It’s not going to be introduced until it’s much safer than the alternative, just because of the way the expectations go for these kinds of technologies, but it’s definitely coming,” says Ray Kurzweil, American inventor, futurist and director of engineer-ing at Google, during remarks at the SAE 2015 World Congress in Detroit. “The technology works.”

A STAGED APPROACHAutonomous vehicles from both Google and Delphi use extreme-ly expensive LIDARs and other technologies that can add hun-dreds of thousands of dollars to the price of a vehicle. Some of Google’s self-driving cars are reportedly equipped with upward of $150,000 of additional technologies — more than four times the amount an average consumer paid for a vehicle in 2014.

Safety and cost are the two main automotive issues, which is why industry experts believe autonomous vehicle technologies will be introduce in stages. It’s starting now with active safety and adaptive cruise control systems that can keep a vehicle a safe distance away from other cars, keep it in its lane, brake in

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scenarios in seconds, determining possibilities of possibilities with advanced algorithms, or sets of rules to be followed in calculations and other problem-solving operations.

>>

>>


ME AND MY SELF-DRIVING CARBY HENRY PAYNE

If a steering wheel that spins around like Linda Blair’s head in “The Exorcist” freaks you out, then self-driving cars may not be for you.

Last summer, while I rode in Google’s autonomous Lexus 450h — texting and checking email on my smartphone — the wheel spun this way and that, steering the hybrid-electric SUV through the busy streets of Montain View, CA.

SPIIIIIIN to the right as we (there were four of us in the vehicle) made a right turn at a stoplight. SPIIIIN to the left as we negotiated a long sweeper. Or suddenly vibrating — BRRDDDDRRR — in anticipa-tion of taking avoidance action when a bus suddenly feinted a turn into our lane. Didn’t bother me a bit. I kept texting.

Google claims its self-driving cars don’t need a steering wheel, but the law — for now — requires it in case of an emergency so a driver can take over. All of Google’s cars have a steering wheel.

That would be a deal breaker for my wife.

Despite the Google car’s celebrity, cars with various forms of autonomy are actually quite com-mon on today’s roads. Twenty per-cent of Ford’s Escape sales come with a self-parking feature, for example. Mrs. Payne and I recently test-drove a new Ford Edge cross-over, which can parallel and perpendicular park itself, thank you very much.

After passing an open parking spot, my wife braked, and then put the Edge in self-park mode. As the steering wheel spun right, then left, to negotiate the space, I thought she was going to throw holy water at the demon to make it stop. When the Edge finally braked to a stop in the space, the car had made its point: Autonomous driving works — and it’s not for everyone.

Neither is it for every driving situation.“Commuting to work in the morning

isn’t fun,” says Chris Urmson, director of Google’s Self-Driving Car Project. “What if we could let people focus on things like texting that they are already doing in their cars, but do it safely?”

Google predicts that autonomous vehicles could eliminate 90 percent of the approximately 32,000 car-related fatalities a year, while making commuting less stressful

and more productive. Maybe. Maybe not.This May, Urmson disclosed that his self-

driving cars have been in 11 “minor acci-dents” — none of them caused by the Google car — including rear-end bang-ups and a t-bone. Damage was minor because Google self-drivers have been intentionally limited to routes with speed limits under 25 mph.

Self-driving on high-speed interstates is more problematic. Earlier this year, I tried “self-driving” Audi’s state-of-the-art A8 luxury sedan. The $100,000 beauty bristles with driver-assist features — lane-keep assist, adaptive cruise control, collision mit-igation — utilizing similar radar and cam-

era technologies found on the Google car.But such technologies — particularly

cameras — demand good driving infra-structure. Like well-painted lane lines on highways. Unlike the Lodge Freeway. On my way home from downtown Detroit, the Audi’s lane-keep assist expertly stayed between the marking lines … until it didn’t. At the point when a line inexplicably disap-peared — due to a lack of road maintenance or because it was obscured by a tire mark — the system would simply beep at me and display a message in the instrument cluster: “PLEASE TAKE OVER STEERING.”

Oh, well, so much for those emails I wanted to send.

Such gaps in technology are why Google cars carry a Velodyne laser dome. Aka, LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). Aka, the bubblegum machine.

On top of Google’s own marshmallow-shaped autonomous vehicle, it looks like an

old police light on top of a ‘60s police cruis-er. With its four supports atop my Lexus, it resembles a giant insect. Containing 64 lasers spinning at 10 revolutions per sec-ond, the LIDAR takes 1.5 million measure-ments per second. Under the skin, a quad-core processor syncs the laser’s 360-degree view with preprogrammed maps of the sur-rounding area — this is where the Google Maps department comes in handy — to navigate a complex, ever-changing field of pedestrians, potholes, stoplights, orange barrels, soccer balls, etc. — not to mention other vehicles.

It’s expensive. Really expensive. An analysis by business

magazine Fast Company esti-mates that a $24,000 Toyota Prius adapted for Google’s fleet costs an eye-popping $320,000 once optioned with LIDAR and other necessary features.

Such costs are a challenge to transportation companies like California’s airport-focused Prime Time Shuttle, which are on the front lines of adopting autonomous tech.

“Driverless vehicles will change the game,” says Prime Time Shuttle’s CEO Rattan Joea, who sees an Uber-like, autono-mous-ride-share future. “It will

streamline our service by taking the opera-tor out of the equation. Computers don’t get tired. They don’t get sleepy.”

But regulation remains a barrier. Daimler AG’s Freightliner division is devel-oping autonomous trucks that would allow the driver “to take care of other duties — paperwork, delivery scheduling and so on — while the truck steers itself,” writes John McCormick in The Detroit News. In the wake of this May’s fatal Amtrak train crash outside Philadelphia — due in part, apparently, to a gap in an autonomous train system — the prospect of licensing 65,000-pound self-driving trucks hurtling down populated freeways looks remote.

The near future of autonomous cars is likely the continued refinement of driver-assist technologies like collision mitigation and self-park. Which means a new genera-tion of travelers that will find spinning steer-ing wheels as common as smart phones.

Henry Payne tests Google’s autonomous Lexus 450h.


case of an emergency and warn drivers of impending collisions and accidents.

Instead of using expensive LIDAR, some companies are looking to devel-op “highly automated” systems that keep drivers in the loop under certain conditions, but still offer autonomous driving features.

“We are not so much focused on adding more functionalities,” says Stef-fen Linkenbach, Continental’s NAFTA director of systems and technology. “Our focus is on the safety aspect.” The company is concentrating on “ev-erything that is not visible” in the cars, including safety architecture and redundancies to ensure a malfunctioning system is supported by another system that can safely perform the same function.

Continental, with its North American headquarters in Auburn Hills, is on its second highly automated vehicle, a retrofitted Chrysler 300 sedan. It does not use LIDAR. It uses products that the German-based auto supplier is developing or offers.

Continental collected terabytes of data as the vehicle drove more than 25,000 miles on its own during cross-country trips in recent years. The com-pany, like its competitor Delphi, sees itself as being a catalyst for the even-tual move into autonomous vehicles.

On a daily basis, Continental drives its retrofitted Chrysler 300 on the roads of Southeast Michigan, modifying the algorithms to extend the features and functionality of the car. Continental’s roadmap is leading to fully automated driving — where the driver doesn’t need to monitor the system on highways — in 2025 (see sidebar, page 24).

“We will go in the direction of (full) automation, but we will still have dif-ferent use cases when we have this full autonomy,” Linkenbach says. “On the highway, I am convinced we will be able to do this in the next 10 years. I’m not so convinced that we’ll be able to do fully autonomous in an urban environment in the next 10 years. You have a lot of uncertainties and situations there.”

‘SUPER CRUISE’Continental, Delphi and many others believe it could take decades for au-tonomous vehicles to be in numbers on roadways, but vehicles that have the ability to drive someone from Detroit to Florida on I-75 are on the horizon.

A number of automakers have announced plans to introduce vehicles with advanced cruise control systems that will not only keep you a safe distance away from the vehicle ahead of you — many even in rush hour — but will keep you in your lane while driving on the highway.

GM calls it “Super Cruise.” It’s set to debut in late 2016 on the 2017 Cadillac CT6. Tesla Motors Inc. calls it “autopilot.” The California-based electric vehicle manufacturer expects its technology to debut this year on its Model S. But no matter what the name, it’s a grand step toward autono-mous vehicles from both technological and cultural acceptance standpoints.

The new systems basically utilize adaptive cruise control, braking and steering combined with radar, camera and sensor systems to keep a vehicle in its lane. Using GPS data, they work on highways, where there are fewer variables, including pedestrians, and safety concerns.

“For us, automated driving is going to move in a parallel path with advanced safety systems that make it more robust and show immediate benefits to peo-

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THE SPEED BUMPS

Besides safety and cost concerns, the foremost challenges for autonomous vehicles have noth-ing to do with the automotive industry. They’re driven by laws, regulations and liability issues.

“There’s a lot of work to be done in regula-tory and legal,” says Michigan senior automo-tive adviser and Automotive Industry Office senior vice president Kevin Kerrigan, who was appointed by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in November. “There are lots of questions that need to be worked out.”

A few basics: Who’s liable if a car driving autonomously gets into an accident? Or even worse, what if the vehicle’s computer analyzes every situation, makes the best choice and someone is still killed? Is the driver responsi-ble? The auto company? A supplier that provid-ed the steering or other parts? Or the software developer who made the algorithms?

It’s arguably a more complex situation than the autonomous vehicle itself. It’s why numer-ous federal regulators and local politicians have to look to pass laws and invest in testing areas and infrastructure to help companies work with public officials to find solutions.

“It’s not going to be a case where we can design something in Michigan, and when you drive across the border into Ohio it doesn’t work,” says Kerrigan, also known as Michigan’s “auto czar.” “It’s going to have to be an agree-ment across the board at a federal level, and in fact a global level.”

Michigan has been proactive when it comes to testing and developing autonomous vehicles. It is one of four states to pass laws that clearly allow for driverless car testing on public roads. State officials also have partnered with federal officials and supported projects such as Mcity Test Facility in Ann Arbor for city and con-nected car testing and Michigan Department of Transportation’s (MDOT) “connected corridor.”

Mcity is essentially a data-centric play-ground to test the vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) capabilities of connected cars, which many believe is a must for fully autonomous vehicles.

The connected corridor represents a partnership with MDOT, General Motors, Ford Motor Co. and a University of Michigan consor-tium to deploy V2I communication technology-enabled corridors on more than 120 miles of Metro Detroit roadways.

“We’re committed to the autonomous and connected vehicle concept,” Gov. Snyder told thousands of engineers during open-ing remarks at the SAE 2015 World Congress. “We’re going to continue to do new things to move that along.”

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ple,” says John Wilkerson, TRW Automotive’s senior communications manager.Livonia-based TRW Automotive, which was recently acquired by German

auto supplier ZF, has been a leader in active safety solutions that are critical to highly automated and autonomous vehicles.

But experts have to be careful. In May, it was reported that four of the 50 or so self-driving cars being tested on public roadways in California had been involved in accidents. The news reports brought hoards of negative publicity, even though the cars — three owned by Google and one by Delphi — were in collisions caused by human error.

“It will get a lot of scrutiny,” says Owens, of Delphi, whose company’s vehicle was stationary when hit by another vehicle that hopped over a me-dian. “You are going to have situations like that that are beyond a system to do anything about.”

EMBRACING CONNECTIVITYThe ambiguous term “connected car” is a phrase the automotive industry has played around with for years that’s now becoming better known to consumers. It’s essentially a vehicle that connects with you, your smart-phone, the road, other vehicles, its manufacturer and itself to share data.

In May, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx at Delphi Labs @ Silicon Valley announced the department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will move ahead of its public timetable for its proposal to re-quire vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication devices in new vehicles, and it will work to accelerate testing necessary to ensure that V2V and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) transmissions are free from radio interference.

While radars and other sensors are key to autonomous vehicles, connect-ed cars with internet, antennas and cloud-based operating systems that can essentially communicate with one another are expected be a breakthrough for autonomous vehicles.

“The auto will be the 2.0 of connected vehicle strategy,” says EY’s Tremblay. “Version 1.0 is what we’re currently driving toward, with having vehicle technologies that allow a car to operate by itself and sense its surroundings without being connected to a network.”

The connected car combined with the highly automated vehicle makes it so a driver could get into his or her vehicle, put a destination in, select preferences and let the vehicle drive to that requested destination along the most-optimized route.

The connected car, however, also opens up a Pandora’s Box for automak-ers who know how to make quality cars and trucks but, as we’ve seen with infotainment systems, aren’t as quick to adapt to the changes and advance-ments in technologies, not to mention security and data-ownership issues.

That’s where technology companies come in. Infotainment systems and connected cars have allowed for more traditional software and technology companies to come into the automotive realm. Many, such as Hungarian navigation solutions provider NNG, which started out in gaming, have lo-cated in Metro Detroit to be close to auto suppliers and automakers.

“We needed a focal point for that activity,” says NNG Vice President of Business Development Jim Robnett inside the company’s new office in Bir-mingham, MI. “We wanted to bring the NNG story closer to the customers.”

HIGHWAY MERGING

There are more than 2,000 miles separating the Motor City and Silicon Valley. But in recent years, companies from both Michigan and California have been exchang-ing expertise and opening automotive offices in San Francisco and tech offices in Detroit.

It’s because tech companies such as Google, even with $66 billion in revenue, are great at technology but don’t have the expertise to develop and mass-produce vehi-cles. And auto companies such as Delphi, GM, Ford and Continental — all of which have offices in Silicon Valley — aren’t as versed in the technology side of things.

“It’s a very difficult space,” says Jeffrey Owens, chief technology officer and executive vice president at Delphi Automotive. “In some cases, it’s uncharted terri-tory for the automotive industry or any industry.”

More than a dozen traditional automotive compa-nies are present in Silicon Valley. “Different companies have different approaches,” says Steffen Linkenbach, Continental Corporation’s NAFTA director of systems and technology. “At the end of the day we don’t have to find a common approach; we need to find the most effective approach.”

A car is not a cell phone, and a cell phone is not a car. You can’t reboot your car going 70 miles per hour. That’s how recalls happen and consumers reject the technol-ogy, which is why technology and automotive companies partnering is key for the success of highly automated and autonomous vehicles.

GM has partnered with companies such as AT&T to provide 4G connectivity in its vehicles. Delphi teamed up with Ottomatika — a company started by Carnegie Mellon University focused on automating driving func-tions of automobiles and other transportation — for its autonomous vehicle. And it’s likely one of the reasons Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV CEO Sergio Marchionne is calling for an auto industry consolidation and has reportedly met with Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

“I’ve always been intrigued by the notion of having technology disruptors show up in the marketplace and change the paradigm,” Marchionne said during the com-pany’s first quarter earnings call when discussing how the auto industry wastes too much capital. “If they show up and they are truly successful, with their cash piles and know-how, they could fundamentally hurt this industry.”

So far no companies have made major acquisition or joint venture announcements, but industry experts and others see it as inevitable.

“Many industries are going to pop up,” says renowned futurist Faith Popcorn, founder and CEO of New York-based marketing consulting firm BrainReserve. The consumer trends expert, who the New York Times has called “The Trend Oracle,” sees autonomous vehicles coming sooner than many, lead-ing a revolution to customizable “mobile pods” that will essentially be “homes on wheels.”

“I think it’s absolutely going to reinvent the car industry,” she says. “It’s just going to change our whole concept of getting from here to there.”


summertime

From Paradise, MI, it’s a short drive to the Tahquamenon River and Tahquamenon Falls in Michigan’s eastern Upper Peninsula.SU

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summertime Jazz up your summer with six truly unique

Michigan destinations

BY SUSAN R. POLLACK

adventures

RAFT ACROSS A NATURAL SPRING Tucked away in the forest of the Upper Peninsula’s Palms Book State Park, 12 miles west of Manistique, Michi-gan’s largest natural spring is a bit tricky to find and even harder to pronounce. But Kitch-iti-Kipi — “The Big Spring” — is a family-friendly attraction that’s worth the effort. Boasting the dazzling blue-green colors of the Caribbean, KITCH-i-ti-Ki-pee (with short i’s) is 200 feet across, 40 feet deep and a constant 45-degree tempera-ture, whatever the season. More than 10,000 gallons of fresh water per minute gush year-round from fissures in the underlying limestone.

Aboard a wooden raft, youngsters and grown-ups delight in turning the big steering wheel that pulls it along a cable across the pond. Everyone oohs and ahhs looking through viewing windows at the fat trout and bubbling sand visible in the crystal-clear water below. No wonder Native Americans called it “Mirror of

Some vacationers enjoy visiting the same

beloved spot year after year. But if

you’ve got that “been there, done that”

feeling, here are six off-the-beaten-path at-

tractions you just might add to your list of

Michigan favorites.

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Heaven.” Credit for this natural treasure goes to John I. Bellaire, owner of a Five and Dime store in Manistique, who discovered the spring among fallen trees in the thick wilderness. He persuaded the Palms Book Land Company to sell it to the state of Michigan for $10 in 1926 and preserve it for public recreational use. uptravel.com

GO TO HELL …Elayne and Harvey Urnovitz of suburban Detroit say they had ‘a helluva good time’ when they went to Hell to celebrate her birthday last year. “If you blink, you’ll miss it,” Harvey says of Hell, a tiny crossroads 15 miles northwest of Ann Arbor. At-tractions include Screams Souvenirs and Helloween, where a favorite Screams Ice Cream treat is bananas in the form of a gravedigger with coconut shavings for hair and multiple scoops of ice cream drizzled with chocolate or fruit sauce. Anyone who eats a whole “Gravedigger” wins a death certificate, says Judi Wilcox, shop manager.

At the post office, every letter is burned around the edges and stamped with a Hell postmark. The Hell Hole Diner has new owners and a new name this season. Other activities in Hell include a wedding chapel (“nowhere to

go but up,” Wilcox says), an 18-hole mini golf course that’s handicap-accessible, canoe and kayak rentals and access to Pinckney’s highly rated Potawatomi hiking trail. On Sept. 19, the 14th annual Hell Hearse Fest, sponsored by the Just Hearse’N Around car club, will try to

beat its 51-hearse record set in 2011. Or, visit in winter when you may find that Hell freezes over. You can buy a square inch of Hell for $6.66 any time. Some visitors travel hundreds of miles, Wilcox says, to say they’ve “been to

Hell and back.” gotohellmi.com, 734-878-2233

… OR DISCOVER PARADISE If the idea of Paradise sounds more appealing than a trip to Hell, head in the opposite direction, some 340 miles north, to the Upper Peninsula on Lake Superior’s Whitefish Bay. The little town of Para-dise — population 471 — is just over an hour north of the Mackinac Bridge. With a history of shipping, log-ging, fishing and blueberry and cranberry crops, Paradise

is best known today for wild blueberries, thanks to the great 1922 fire that destroyed the land’s natural growth and laid the groundwork for one of Michi-gan’s most productive wild blueberry re-gions. In fact, most of the land north of the Tahquamenon River is covered with

The Au Sable River Canoe Marathon, 120 river miles from Grayling to Oscoda, is a favorite annual pastime for paddlers and spectators alike. The 68th event is scheduled this year on July 25 and 26.

Travel to Hell (like Harvey Urnovitz) or to Paradise in the UP. Each features unique attractions for the whole family.

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wild blueberries — along the roads, in the fields and out in the open. Be sure to BYOB — bring your own bucket.

Each summer, on the third full weekend of August (Aug. 21-23 this year), crowds of visitors get the blues in Paradise in the form of homemade pies, muffins, buckles and pancakes — mounds of them. The food, including a daily Blueberry Brunch and pie-eating contest, is complemented by an arts and crafts fair, horse-drawn wagon rides and entertainment — from jugglers, magi-cians and storytellers to strolling musicians and the Blueberry Jamboree.

From Paradise, it’s an easy drive to Tahquamenon Falls State Park, various fish-ing sites and Whitefish Point to tour the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, lighthouse and bird observatory. michigansparadise.com

WHETHER PADDLER OR FAN, BRACE YOURSELF FOR AN ALL-NIGHTER Sometime during the long, dark night,

participants wonder what the heck they’re doing pulling an all-nighter in a canoe on the Au Sable River across Northeast Michigan.But mostly they focus on paddling in a grueling 120-mile marathon canoe race marking its 68th anniversary July 25-26. North America’s longest and most difficult nonstop canoe race, the Au Sable River Canoe marathon is also an exciting event for fans who revel in its reputation as “America’s Toughest Spectator Sport.” After partying much of the day, they line the riverbanks in Grayling, in mid-Michigan, for Saturday night’s thrilling, 9 p.m., LeMans-style start when some 75 two-person teams jostle for position as they run through downtown streets, carrying lightweight canoes atop their heads. After the chaotic, shotgun launch, many fans drive all night, stopping to cheer favorite paddlers as they pass under bridges or portage canoes over six hydroelectric dams. The race typically takes anywhere from 14 to 19 hours.

Teams of “bank runners” or “feeders”

scramble to supply the paddlers with cups of food, beverages and other necessities. By Sunday morning, camera-brandishing crowds grab riverside seats before 11 a.m. in Oscoda, near Lake Huron, to watch the weary win-ners. Cheers erupt as canoes glide across the finish line to the blaring sound of the “Wil-liam Tell Overture” and paddlers in varying conditions make their way to the massage tent. ausablecanoemarathon.org

GOOD EVENING STAR SHINE Nearly two-thirds of U.S. residents live where they can’t see the stars of the Milky Way at night, and most students never learn about the night sky in school. That’s what inspired Mary Stewart Adams, author, story-teller and stargazer, to spearhead the effort to create the Headlands International Dark Sky Park, two miles west of Mackinaw City. With more than two miles of Lake Michigan shoreline, the 600-acre forested preserve along the Straits of Mackinac is in

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Visitors to the Headlands International Dark Sky Park — a 600-acre parcel of undeveloped Lake Michigan shoreline — can view constellations, shooting stars, meteor showers, the Northern Lights and more.

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The Oakland County Connected Vehicle Initiative “I will be placing Oakland County on the global map as the first county in the world to initiate a countwide connected car ecosystem. This initiative demonstrates our bold thinking and the potential for job growth is staggering. I think we all know that Michigan is where the next generation of the automobile is being invented, and Oakland County is at the forefront of that innovation.”

L. Brooks PattersonOakland County Executive

State of the County Address • February 12, 2014

For more information about being involved with developing the world’s first countywide connected car ecosystem, contact [email protected] or visit AdvantageOakland.com


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the vanguard of a growing interna-tional movement to protect exceptional starry skies and nocturnal habitat from light pollution. Since its official designation in 2011 as one of the world’s first 10 Dark Sky Parks (there are 20 now), the Headlands has offered visitors an array of starry-sky experi-ences — from viewing constellations, shoot-ing stars and meteor showers to glimpsing the occasional comet, eclipses (both solar and lunar) and the Northern Lights. The lat-ter, though unpredictable, tend to be most prevalent around the Equinox — late March and September, Adams says.

As the Headlands’ program director, Adams has initiated such projects as the Dark Sky Discovery Trail, a mile-long paved path and self-guided smartphone tour highlighting cul-tural and astronomical discoveries. Next up is a waterfront observatory under construction

this summer. The Headlands is open 24 hours a day, every day, rain or shine, free of charge. Visitors may stay through the night for dark-sky viewing opportunities. Though camping units are not permitted, star buffs are advised to bring blankets, sleeping bags, chairs, food and beverages — and to dress for tempera-tures 10 degrees cooler than expected. em-metcounty.org/darkskypark, 231-348-1704

Details about special narrated “sky cruises” can be found at sheplersferry.com/cruises.

STEP INTO QUIRKY LEGS INN In a world of predictable, cookie-cutter chain restaurants, Legs Inn, 20 miles southwest of the Headlands International Dark Sky Park, offers a refreshing, one-of-a-kind Up North experience. Described on its Michigan Historical Site marker as “exu-berant and unusual,” the rustic stone-and-

wood structure, a Cross Village landmark, is named for the old-fashioned cast iron stove legs lining its roof. It’s all the vision of Stanley Smolak, a Polish immigrant and self-taught artist who enlisted the craftsmanship of Native American Odawas to construct the restaurant from local materials in the 1930s. Décor includes fantastical creatures and carvings Smolak fashioned from limbs, tree-roots and driftwood. Smolak called them “nature’s oddities.”

On a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, surrounded by lush gardens, the bustling outdoor patio is a popular spot for sampling the house specialty Polish fare — from pierogis, potato pancakes and stuffed cabbage to a berry crumble cake called Polish Berry Szarlotka. Favorite starters include the Polish vodka-infused Bloody Mary and smoked whitefish spread. legsinn.com

Diners often wait in long lines for a patio table at Legs Inn, overlooking Lake Michigan. Rustic and quirky, the restaurant specializes in Polish food, often served by a European waitstaff.

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iMatter gives you practical tools and tactics to help you determine what matters most and achieve balance between business and home. In the workplace, iMatter builds team trust and collaboration, positively affecting your company culture and your bottom line. Visit imatter.com to receive a complimentary copy of our “Take 5” e-book, and learn more about our powerful upcoming workshops for individuals, business teams and couples.

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We live in crazy times, con-stantly bombarded with information, distractions

and opportunities. How can you get through all of your “to-do’s” and “wish I didn’t have to’s” with-out being completely stressed out? Here are a few easy steps that you can use to help focus on what matters most and achieve balance in your work and home life.

1. Create a ritual.Set aside a window of time each day for re-flection. For me, it’s 30 minutes early in the morning before my family wakes. Others like to reflect in the evening so they are ready for the next day. The amount of time isn’t as im-portant as the regular commitment to “check in” with yourself.

2. Build structure.Consider three questions when you reflect, and take notes! You’ll need them for the next step.• What matters most to me right now? Fam-ily, friends, health, landing a successful busi-ness deal? There are no right or wrong an-swers. This exercise helps you to focus where you will put your energy and effort.

• What are my three most im-portant action items for the day? Identify concrete actions you can complete today that will make a positive impact on what matters most to you. For example, if friend-ship matters most, commit to call-ing a friend you haven’t seen in a while and set a date to meet up. A realistic goal is to identify three to five action items per day. • If it were up to me, what one

thing would be true? Your answer may be funny, sarcastic or straightforward. For exam-ple, if you have a lot of meetings scheduled in different parts of town, your answer might be, “Teleporting would be a real thing.” This question helps frame your mindset: Are you feeling hopeful, frustrated, determined? Knowing where you are emotionally helps you identify potential opportunities and roadblocks to getting to what matters most.

3. Share your thoughts.Any worthy goal written down and shared is likely to happen, so share your thoughts with a trusted group of friends, colleagues or family members. I like to call this trusted group my “tribe.” I use the iMatter 331 app to share with my tribe, but you may find that

sharing in an email works for you. Shar-ing may feel awkward at first, but you’ll be surprised at the feedback you get: support, follow-up or recommendations for ways to tackle a problem you hadn’t thought about. Sharing also helps you to follow through on your action items.

4. Be exponentially productive.Sure, there are 50 things on your to-do list, but when you focus on a few daily action items that truly matter most to you, you’ll feel more accomplished. All the other items can then be quickly knocked out or delegated, leaving more time for the things you truly enjoy.

Bob Shenefelt is a visionary entrepreneur and founder of iMatter, iMatter for Kids and RCS. Bob’s passion is to grow entrepreneurs, kids and communities. He is an author, speaker and success coach. imatter.com

what matters most? Four steps to balancing work and home lifeBY BOB SHENEFELT

BOB SHENEFELT When you focus on a few

daily action items that truly matter most to you, you’ll feel more accomplished.


TECHTWILIGHT 2015

TechTwilight 2015 was held at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum on May 15. The event featured entrepreneurs from around the region showcasing their innovations and inspiring young minds to consider careers in science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM). Attendees enjoyed an evening of activities, demonstrations and hands-on invention presented by companies and schools throughout Southeast Michigan. Now in its 7th year, the event provides companies and student groups with the opportunity to celebrate and share their innovations in an environment of discovery and entrepreneurial achievements. Proceeds and event sponsorships support the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum’s mission of inspiring young people to embrace STEAM.

1. Attendees created their ideal Tomorrowland for the chance to win movie passes. 2. Driving around the sidewalks outside the museum was fun for all ages. 3. TechTwilight attendees learned Minecraft code from Gamestart School. 4. Smart robots challenged TechTwilight attendees and provided hours of entertainment. 5. Sending a car flying down the Maker Works racetrack was a popular attraction. 6. Attendees tested their fitness on NuStep’s recumbent trainers.

1. Jonathan Crabtree, Laura Schmidt and David Darbyshire of DASI Solutions. 2. Students learn about high-tech manufacturing processes. 3. The event attracted thousands of attendees. 4. Dozens of speakers presented at THE BIG M. 5. Students participated in interactive sessions. 6. Mark Stevens of Center for Automotive Research. 7. People from every corner of manufacturing came to share their industry expertise.

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THE BIG M MANUFACTURING CONVERGENCE

THE BIG M Manufacturing Convergence was held June 2-4 at Detroit’s Cobo Center, bringing with it the option to participate in a hands-on car assembly workshop. The exercise introduced participants to Scrum, a manufacturing method designed to add energy, focus, clarity and transparency to project planning and implementation. This was just one of the interactive programs that allowed attendees to get practical experience with the latest technologies. The event, hosted by SME, also included a lineup of sessions focused on emerging manufacturing technologies such as advanced materials, rapid/additive manufacturing, automated manufacturing, R&D and tooling.

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exploring michigan’s emerging tech sectors … · exploring michigan’s emerging tech sectors...

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