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To follow up on my previous post, here is a full recap of a presentation I recently heard from Dr. Joseph Salvo at the GE Global Research Lab. I thought this presentation was one of the best I’ve ever heard about the future of transportation technology.

Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but it was not this and other singular inventions that separated him from contemporaries. Edison appreciated the value of a system. He built the nation’s first electrical distribution network through General Electric, and opened a new economy for electric-powered devices. Joseph Salvo, Ph.D., also appreciates the value of a system. He is the manager of the Pervasive Decisioning Systems at the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna, N.Y. 

To describe “pervasive decisioning systems” to the average person, Salvo talks about the natural phenomena of swarm intelligence. An ant is barely a “conscious” creature, but a swarm of ants can respond to their environment in very sophisticated ways. They can cross streams, deforest huge areas, and organize large, underground colonies.

“The system of ants is very powerful,” he says. Evolution did not favor ants with the biggest brains or the most memory. It selected them for survival of the fittest. What, then, do ant swarms have in common with making complex decisions in transportation and logistics? A lot, Salvo says.

Today, we are leaving the Information Age and entering the Systems Age. In the Systems Age, everyone is drowning in data. Digital content is so pervasive and so inexpensive, and storage is cheap. Instead of throwing content away, we often become paralyzed by it, he says.In this new age, the concept of the physical object is gone, and so is the value of content and data alone. We operate in a “knowledge economy,” where value is gained by what you can create in the virtual space. Several years ago, for example, the value of a cell phone was equal to its value as an object — a phone. Today, its value has grown to include a calculator, calendar, media entertainment center, translator and more. 

“People are spending thousands a month on a device that used to be a phone, and they can justify it,” Salvo says. “It went from being a box to a brain.”

GE’s Asset Intelligence solutions, which include the VeriWise Trucking system for trailers, are following a similar evolution, he says. The trailer is no longer a box. VeriWise is the “brain” of the trailer, and gives the object a form of artificial consciousness. The device knows where it is through GPS. It becomes aware of its environment — its friends and its foes — by using sensors that detect the status of tire pressure, doors, cargo, temperature, etc.

“You have to have data processing at the edge of the network, not just throwing data back to a central box,” he says.   In the near future, Salvo says VeriWise will have system “consciousness.” Trailers will form a community by interacting with loading docks or communicating with other trailers via cellular and Bluetooth communications. The trailer will recognize itself and the objects on its team, as well as recognize the competition. The trailer only shares information with objects it trusts.

Moving up another level in the order of system hierarchy, trailers are connected to the VeriWise information platform through wide-area cellular and satellite networks. The VeriWise information platform is connected to a fleet’s various information and real-time decision systems.

“The bottom line is that we will allow individuals to make very quick decisions that lead to value, which are normally left on the table or on the road,” Salvo says. The key is to lessen fleets’ dependence on manual tools such as spreadsheets to make decisions such as how to position and route their assets, Salvo says. “If everything goes well, the objects themselves will figure it out.”

Today, the total number of assets (trailers and rail cars) in the GE VeriWise network or “swarm” is approximately 200,000. As the network continues to grow, its momentum will help customers find opportunities in new markets to create “value pools” that no one has imagined yet, Salvo says.