We Are Gatik: Episode One

Dr. Adam Campbell
Senior Manager, Safety Innovation & Impact

Autonomous vehicles (AV) that outperform human drivers? Melding AI-first algorithms with safety redundancies of classical robotics techniques to create autonomous transportation that improves road safety for everyone? It sounds like a lofty goal, and honestly, it is. The scope of what we’re trying to achieve at Gatik is massive. To many people, it seems like a far off vision of the future. But the reality of where we are today is more promising than I could have ever known before joining Gatik. To me, the future is clear: AVs will provide a safer and more resilient transportation solution. Yet my journey to Gatik was anything but obvious.

Growing up, baseball was a huge part of my life. It was a passion I pursued throughout my youth and into university. In 2004, I had the privilege of being drafted by the Boston Red Sox. It was the moment I had dreamed of since I was a kid. But it was at that point I knew I had to make a decision that would impact the rest of my life.

Planning for the future is a risk. There is no crystal ball to show us where our decisions will ultimately lead us. We gather the information we can and ultimately instinct directs us. For me, I chose to continue my academic pursuits. I eventually earned my Ph.D. in Neuromechanics. That led me to a career in forensic engineering, where I spent nearly a decade investigating and researching the human factors involved in car crashes. It was imperative to not simply understand what went wrong in each situation, but the human variables that lead to that sequence of events and what could have been done to prevent it in the first place. In that pursuit, we ultimately had to fully quantify the physical and mental limits of human drivers.

Then came the opportunity to create “drivers” that aren’t bound by the same limits. It was the chance to take all I knew and had learned about the real-world capabilities of the human driver and help develop a vehicle that could surpass them. So, in 2021, I joined Gatik to lead the Safety Innovation & Impact team.

Our approach to developing autonomous transportation is deliberate and direct: at every level of performance, development and testing, we are building and deploying our AV technology to demonstrably outperform highly attentive human drivers on our commercial routes. In doing so at scale, we will pose no greater risk to the public than had a human been behind the wheel. This is not the end goal, but the starting line from which to continue to build and improve upon while ensuring public safety.

As an example of this approach in action, consider an edge-case (i.e., highly rare hazardous situation) with a vehicle unexpectedly launching into the lane ahead from a two-way stop controlled intersection with only about three seconds before impact. Baseline performance for human drivers responding to this unexpected hazard would be to begin evasive braking in about 1.5-seconds, on average, after the start of the intruder’s motion. Now, if you knew that your AV stack would consistently respond with evasive braking to the same or similar hazard within only 0.5-seconds, you could directly quantify the reaction time improvement of the AV over the human driving population (i.e., being faster to respond to the hazard than >99.9 % of human drivers on the roadway today), and ensure that AV performance reduces collision risk. There are numerous examples where this approach of comparing human drivers to AVs would apply to various edge case scenarios, and functional performance metrics useful in AV design, future regulatory frameworks, insurance programs and beyond. Understanding how to develop for those scenarios demands complete understanding of what a human is capable of and how that translates into collision risk. It is here where my past experience and education comes together in developing a safe and reliable AV system at Gatik.

The road, like life, is unpredictable. Situations don’t always play out as we think they would. You have to account for the unexpected and be resilient to the unknown. You have to be relentless in studying what is experienced every day and in developing the solution to make it safer.

It’s a mindset that I’ve found runs throughout our team at Gatik. With a 100% safety record while Gatik vehicles are operating in autonomous mode, we’ve already shown that autonomous transportation can be safe and reliable today. Through our work with Walmart, Kroger, Tyson Foods, Loblaw, and more, we’ve proven the viability and benefits of our services. (To learn more about what we can offer our customers, visit here.)

As we’re building the next generation of transportation technology to automate the middle mile transportation network, safety will continue to be our guide. Yes, it’s a monumental undertaking. Yes, there will be challenges. But we are undeterred.

Dedication to transparency is key to building trust. The debate around safety in the AV industry will undoubtedly continue. For our part, we’ll continue to be open in our approach and our partnerships with the communities we and our customers serve. We’ve already helped usher in the next revolution in transportation, and now it’s clear that safer roads are starting in the middle mile.

Though my journey has taken its share of turns, I’m proud of where it’s taken me and the opportunity to help tackle these generational challenges. We can transform road safety and deliver autonomy that goes beyond the human benchmark. I can help make safer roads a reality, for everyone. In that pursuit, I am relentless. It’s part of who I am; who we are. We are Gatik.