Renovo and EdgeConneX announced today a collaboration that will provide core software and hardware infrastructure to support and enable the commercial deployment and operation of highly automated vehicles as a service at scale.
The focus of the collaboration is EdgeConneX’s edge data infrastructure with Renovo’s AWare’s vehicle-edge-cloud data orchestration and the AWare edge application environment.
The collaboration between Renovo and EdgeConneX will leverage both companies’ existing and future technologies to address the unprecedented data flow that will be produced by automated mobility systems. A single highly automated vehicle, the company says, generates one to five terabytes (1-5 TB) of raw data per hour. Operating at 14 to 16 hours per day means as much as 50 terabytes per vehicle per day or 20 petabytes per vehicle per year. A modest fleet of 5,000 highly automated vehicles will generate over 100 exabytes of raw data annually. By comparison, in 2014, Facebook’s then 1.2 billion global users generated a total of 220 petabytes that year – 500 times less than such a 5,000 vehicle automated mobility fleet. A significant amount of this data is highly valuable and must be identified, selected, processed, transmitted and stored at the vehicle, edge and cloud contexts against different priorities of cost, timing and privacy.
The collaboration between Renovo and EdgeConneX confirms their mutual commitment to enable automated mobility at scale by providing the underlying physical and software infrastructure necessary to do so. The two companies share the belief that automated mobility as a service is the transformative application of highly automated vehicles and is best implemented in a heterogeneous, interoperable, open configuration that brings together disparate technologies, services and physical assets. Such an approach is particularly important to manage the automated mobility data challenge in a manner that is safe, secure, cost-effective, scalable and fosters open innovation.
Renovo’s AWare OS for automated mobility provides the data orchestration necessary to manage vehicle automation technologies, passenger services, vehicle navigation and real-time data sensors. Combined with EdgeConneX’s dense, global Edge Data Centers (EDCs) and Edge PoP solutions that optimize data delivery by locating access as close as possible to the end user, Renovo and EdgeConneX are refining an operating concept, complete with analysis and modeling of usage and scaling scenarios, with the objective of providing a leading commercial automated mobility data management offering for fleet operators that use AWare as their OS. As highly automated fleets emerge, the need for edge computing infrastructure collocated with the operational hubs for staging, charging, cleaning and maintenance will grow rapidly.
“EdgeConneX’s capability to rapidly deploy edge of network solutions is a perfect complement to Renovo AWare’s leading data orchestration software which together supports the rapid commercial deployment of automated mobility services,” stated Phill Lawson-Shanks, Chief Innovation Officer, EdgeConneX. “Highly automated vehicle fleets will require significant data infrastructure and management at tremendous speed and scale, and we share with Renovo a vision that the need for low latency, security and performance of this aspect of automated mobility services will in large part be solved by going to the Edge.”
The results of EdgeConneX and Renovo’s collaboration will be shown later this year in San Jose, California, when Renovo’s fleet of highly automated vehicles will use EdgeConneX edge infrastructure running AWare to manage the vehicle-edge-cloud data demands. The joint activities around the Renovo fleet will provide valuable data for Renovo, EdgeConneX and AWare ecosystem partners participating in the Renovo fleet on the performance of the combined infrastructure and orchestration tools in an operational context.
“Off-vehicle edge infrastructure and data management are critical to automated mobility services at scale,” states Chris Heiser, Co-Founder and CEO of Renovo. “EdgeConneX is a clear leader in highly connected edge infrastructure and the automation of data centers. We are delighted to be working with them to deliver solutions that ensure secure and reliable management and communication of data between automated vehicles, the edge of the network and the cloud to accelerate commercial deployment and operation at scale of automated mobility.”
AWare is already powering highly automated vehicle fleets including Renovo’s own on public roads. EdgeConneX joins the AWare ecosystem along with a growing list of leading companies in the automated mobility sector including Samsung, Verizon, Velodyne LiDAR, Parsons, INRIX, Argus Cyber Security, CARMERA, Affectiva, Phantom Auto, Metamoto, Civil Maps, Understand.ai, Bestmile and others.
