November 2, 2022 — The Urban Freight Lab hosted our quarterly membership meeting today at Playground Global, a venture capital firm, tech incubator, and engineering lab in Palo Alto, and home to UFL members Lacuna Technologies and BrightDrop.
Being in Silicon Valley — the global center for innovation and technology — the meeting focused on digital transformation and highlighted new tools and technologies to improve urban freight efficiency, manage curb space in real time, and transform city logistics operations.
Live demos were performed by startups Nauto — which works to advance safer commercial vehicle driving by sensing and alerting drivers of upcoming risks — and Agility Robotics — which is working to enhance robotic mobility with a bipedal humanoid package delivery named Digit. The group also toured the headquarters of autonomous delivery company Nuro and saw a demo of the zero-occupancy autonomous R2 vehicle in development for local goods delivery.
Guest speakers included:
- Warren Logan
- Marie Maxham, Lacuna Technologies
- Darryl Forbes, UPS
- Jaime Cannon, Terreno Realty Corporation
- Lior Adorian, WARP
- Tom Maxner, Urban Freight Lab
- Shushman Choudhury, Lacuna Technologies
Topics included implementing digital policy and infrastructure in the public realm, digital tools to enhance operational efficiency, impacts of curb-use allocation on curb performance, and real-time curb management strategies and technologies.
We also heard from other members about corporate-related updates and economic outlooks as part of a roundtable discussion.
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About the Urban Freight Lab (UFL): An innovative public-private partnership housed at the Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics Center at the University of Washington, the Urban Freight Lab is a structured workgroup that brings together private industry with City transportation officials to design and test solutions around urban freight management.