Posted Jan 11, 2018, 7:13 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: May 2012
Location: Metropolitan Detroit
Posts: 712
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Quote:
May Mobility steers to market with new tech licenses, plans to double workforce
By TYLER CLIFFORD
Crain's Detroit Business
January 10, 2018
May Mobility led an autonomous shuttle service pilot with Bedrock LLC employees in downtown Detroit last October.
-May Mobility to add more than 40 employees
-Company gets license to five technologies from UM Tech Transfer
-Firm plans to move into larger headquarters this year
The Ann Arbor-based firm got access to five technologies from the University of Michigan's Technology Transfer Office that CEO Edwin Olson says will improve driving accuracy of its line of green-and-white driverless shuttles. The licenses are a key part in May Mobility's strategy to get its cars on public roads.
Focused on growth, May Mobility is looking to add 40 workers to its staff this year. The current 15-person office, heavy with engineers, is making room for more engineers as well as sales, content creation and customer operations. Olson co-founded the company in 2017 with COO Alisyn Malek, a Crain's 2014 Twenty in their 20s honoree, and Chief Technology Officer Steve Vozar after working together on autonomous vehicle projects with Dearborn-based Ford Motor Co., Detroit-based General Motors Co. and Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp.
"We've gotten big enough that we're going to need an HR person," Olson told Crain's. "We're already bursting at the seams at our first place, we're going to have to get some more real estate. We're looking now," but he did not name the broker that is representing the company.
UM Tech Transfer Director of Licensing Bryce Pilz says bringing these kinds of jobs to Ann Arbor instead of Silicon Valley is significant as Michigan works to attract people to the state.
"The autonomous vehicle field marries two sectors — the auto sector that started here and the tech space that is perceived as being on the West Coast," he said in a statement. "Both hotbeds are competing to be the center of autonomous vehicle development."
May Mobility says it landed licenses it believes will help get its shuttles on the market. One of those technologies that May licensed will help the vehicles with motion and behavioral planning. It will let a car understand how its own actions can influence what other people do in situations such as merging on a freeway, Olson said. This could include maneuvering potholes that pepper many roads in metro Detroit.
"It's important to understand how nosing up on a car might change the behavior of that car," he explained. "That's a piece that's missing from a lot of autonomous vehicle research."
Other licenses offer camera calibration, accurate localization without a powerful computer and accurate positioning systems based on radios. A license for inertia censors will allow the company to "extract higher-quality data out of the standard sensors everyone is using," Chief Technology Officer Steve Vozar said in the release.
May Mobility wants to carve its way into the market by doing what other autonomous-focused companies have yet to explore. Olson says the firm has prioritized small routes to target customers that need short-distance travel that's safe and personal. The company bused Bedrock LLC employees in a square block in downtown Detroit from the First National Building in Cadillac Square to employee parking last October in a pilot program with the Dan Gilbert-owned property management firm.
May Mobility's goal is to contract its transportation services to corporate, medical and college campuses.
"A lot of companies are basically trying to build, essentially, an autonomous Uber, but it's really hard. You'd almost have to be able to handle almost any road in the city," Olson said. "We want to find relatively small routes that make business sense today and to get going. Highly constrained routes where there is only a handful of city routes you have to care about."
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"Outside of the life sciences, this is far and away the most successful startup we've had at the University of Michigan in raising that first round of funding so quickly," Pilz said in a statement. "That speaks a lot about Ed and his team."
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http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...lans-to-double
Quote:
Robertson Brothers to build 100 homes on former school sites in Ferndale
By ANNALISE FRANK
Crain's Detroit Business
January 11, 2018
The 72-unit, 4.39-acre Parkdale Townes development is bounded by Fielding Street, Allen Road, Garbutt Park and Gardendale Street just north of Eight Mile Road in Ferndale. Bloomfield Hills-based Robertson Brothers Co. is building townhouses that are likely to start at around $200,000.
-Ferndale Public Schools sold two former school properties for $1 million
-Robertson Brothers Co. to build 100 houses and townhouses on sites
-Demolition of Taft Digital Learning Center building underway
A Bloomfield Hills-based developer is giving new life to former school properties in Ferndale with plans to build 100 houses and townhouses on two sites.
Robertson Brothers Co officially bought the sites, formerly home to Wilson University High School and the Taft Digital Learning Center, in September through a request for proposals process that started about three years ago, said James Clarke, the developer's president and co-owner, and Jordan Twardy, the city of Ferndale's community and economic development director.
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Robertson Brothers wants to attract middle-class home buyers and young professionals seeking their first homes, Clarke said. The company buys unused property in densely populated areas to redevelop, as opposed to creating "cornfield developments" in more rural areas.
BY THE NUMBERS
Parkdale Townes:
-72 1,200-square-foot and 1,500-square-foot townhouses for purchase
-Expected to start at around $200,000
-One- and two-car garages
-On 4.39 acres
-Land development to start in the spring
-To finish first model in late summer
-Developer Robertson Brothers Co. to receive tax increment financing -reimbursement of $2.8 million over 10-15 years
Wilson Park Village:
-28 standalone 2,097-square-foot homes for purchase
-Three bedrooms, two and a half baths
-Cost between $350,000 and $400,000
-On 4.25 acres
-Robertson to receive tax increment financing reimbursement of $1.6 million
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http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...chool-sites-in
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