Motive Expands Visibility with Added AI Models and New Asset Tracking Capabilities

AI-powered integrated operations platform Motive detailed recent updates and unveiled a range of new products and services to drive driver safety, spend management, fleet management, and equipment monitoring during its inaugural Motive Innovation Summit this week in Nashville, Tennessee.

The summit, dubbed Vision 24, brought together more than 500 customers, vendors, and others to hear the latest Motive technology updates and learn about the new product announcements.

During Vision 24, Motive announced:

• Driver safety solution with First Responder system
• Motive Beacon, Motive Beacon Gateway, and Motive Mesh
• AI Omnivision computer-vision platform

Shoaib Makani, co-founder and CEO, put into perspective the company’s mission, advancements, and how the new offerings integrate with current systems provided by Motive. He opened by explaining Motive’s mission is “To empower the people who run physical operations with tools to make their work safer, more productive, and more profitable.”

The Motive co-founder explained the challenges he said are faced by companies, structural challenges such as rising costs, a heavily constrained labor market, and worker safety. Plus, roads are more dangerous than ever, he said.

“There is an epidemic of unsafe and distracted driving and it has tragic consequences. There were almost 50,000 road fatalities in North America last year, and almost 5,500 worksite deaths,” Makani said. “And unfortunately, the legacy technology in this industry has not helped you overcome these challenges. You've been forced to use a patchwork of disconnected software tools to manage your operations with each one of your teams using a different point solution.”

 He said that fragmented approach results in data silos and prevents companies from taking advantage of the advances in AI to automate their operations.

“The end result is greater technical complexity, and greater organizational complexity, which ultimately translates into higher costs, less safe operations, and reduced productivity,” explained Makani. “We think you can work together in a completely different way. If you can get your people working out of the same system with the same set of tools, you can eliminate manual work, you can perform way better as a team. And importantly, you can leverage AI to automate major workflows in your operations.”

Makani said Motive is the only integrated operations platform that combines driver safety, equipment monitoring, spend management, and fleet management into one system, with AI at the heart of the system.

Driver Safety – AI Detection of More Driver Behaviors and Faster EMS Notification

The goal of Motive’s driver safety solution is, according to Makani, to prevent accidents.  He reported that 91% of customers surveyed reported that Motive has reduced at-fault accidents.

Also, last year Motive commissioned a study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute to test and evaluate the Motive AI Dashcam. The camera system was put through a battery of evaluations, more than 200 tests on a closed track.

The results were favorable for Motive.

“What they found was shocking,” added Makani. “Motive detects unsafe driving behavior three to four times more accurately than other leading competitors. Motive detected almost 90% of unsafe behavior in the cab during these tests.”

In 2023, Motive released new AI models to detect even more unsafe driving behavior, such as:

• Stop sign violations
• Driver distraction detection
• Unsafe lane change monitoring

Motive also updated the ability of companies, or fleets, to customize their safety programs.

“You can choose which events you want to trigger and the threshold at which you want to trigger them, but you can also choose to only alert your drivers and upload video if they persist in the activity,” he explained. “This is how we help you reduce risk even if you don’t have the time or resources to coach on every single unsafe behavior.”

Even with those advances, Makani said Motive is not done, and advances will continue.

New AI Models Focus on Even More Driver Behaviors

Devin Smith, senior product manager, explained Motive currently is working on seven new AI models related to:

• Drowsiness
• Forward collision warning
• Lane swerving
• Unsafe Parking
• Red light violation
• Smoking
• Positive Driving

The driver drowsiness AI model will be released next month.

Motive has also stepped up its game in accident response. Nihar Gupta, senior director, product management, provided some figures related to crashes:

• 54% of fatal crashes involving large trucks are in rural areas.
• It takes an average of 19 minutes for help to arrive at the scene of a crash.
• There is a 13% reduction in fatalities for every minute that first responders arrive faster at a serious collision site.

Motive’s solution is to get help on the way quickly, now through its First Responder capability.

When a severe collision is detected, upload from the dashcam to the Motive cloud is prioritized, typically in about 20 seconds, Gupta explained. A safety team of 400 is on hand so every video is reviewed as fast as within 30 seconds. The fleet or company safety department is contacted immediately.

Now, Motive sends key incident data directly to the EMS agency in the area of the crash and calls over a prioritized line to a police dispatcher as well.

“Because this happens programmatically, we are shaving precious seconds and oftentimes minutes off the time it takes to alert EMS.,” he added. “With this solution, it happens immediately and automatically to the exact, right, local EMS.”

Equipment Monitoring – New Asset Tracking Device Taps into Mesh Network

“Visibility is obviously critical for managing your drivers and your vehicles, but it is also essential for managing your equipment. You need to understand the location, the health, and the utilization of your equipment to operate efficiently,” said Makani.

He explained that managing equipment can be a real problem, sharing that in a survey of Motive customers, 44% reported losing track of a piece of equipment every month.

Last year, Motive launched the Asset Gateway Mini – a tracking and telematics device for dumpsters, trailers, yellow iron, or anything that moves. It tracks the location, health, and utilization of any type of equipment to prevent unauthorized use and to maximize output.

Makani said the Asset Gateway Mini is ideal for large equipment, but Motive now has a way to track smaller assets, even ones that may be inside a building or warehouse.

The Motive Beacon connects to the Motive Beacon Gateway to enable precise indoor location. But, outdoors it connects to the Motive Mesh network, which he said can track anything, everywhere.

David Chou, senior product manager, provided more details of how the Motive Beacon works, explaining how the company had to devise the new gateway for indoor tracking. In providing an example, he used the scenario of pallets that need to be pulled from a warehouse. Rather than walking and looking for the asset, a new app directs the worker to any specific Motive Beacon. It also has the capability of locating tools or other small assets inside a building.

But, once outside, the Motive Beacon needs a different gateway. That connection is accomplished through the Motive Mesh network.

“The Motive Mesh is the entire two million plus active and growing Motive vehicle gateways, asset gateways, and phones that are powering our physical economy,” Chou said.

He used an example. Imagine you have lost or mis-shipped a pallet, or another piece of equipment. If a truck with a Motive vehicle gateway drives past it on the highway, or maybe past it at a fuel pump, that vehicle’s gateway will sense the Motive Beacon, thereby locating the missing asset.

The new product launch included all three elements – the Motive Beacon, the Motive Beacon Gateway, and the Motive Mesh.

Motive AI Omnivision - General-Purpose Computer Vision Platform for Physical Operations

“Anything you can see, we can train this camera to perceive,” explained Makani.

Motive said its new AI Omnivision is a suite of AI-powered software solutions designed to solve customers’ most important challenges by delivering visibility into every corner of an operation. AI Omnivision brings new capabilities to leaders in a broad range of industries, according to Motive, including:

• Construction
• Oil and gas
• Field service
• Passenger transport
• Waste services
• Trucking
• Delivery
• Agriculture
• Food and beverage
• Public sector

AI Omnivision in Real-World Action and The Benefits

Makani offered an example, illustrated by video from AI Omnivision, of the specificity of how the system can be trained. Take the case of a construction site. The safety manager would look for people not wearing personal protective equipment, such as a worker who failed to don a hard hat. The camera’s AI can be trained to look for specifics like that and note the safety issue.

His second example demonstrated the advantage the AI system could provide for service verification in the waste industry.

“When clients overfill their bins, it causes delays and reduces throughput. In some cases, drivers have to end their route early to dump their load. AI Omnivison makes it possible to capture violating customers, at scale, in real-time,” he said.

In a third example, he showed how when AI Omnivision is installed on vehicles operating in urban areas frequented by pedestrians and cyclists the AI can detect them in blind spots beside the vehicle and alert the driver.

In yet another example, he showed how it can be used in the trucking industry.

“We have trained an AI model to identify when there is unauthorized access to the cargo, to the trailer, either outside of working hours or outside of the consignee’s geofence. And because the AI Omnicam has an integrated cellular modem, we’re able to deliver that update to you real time,” he explained.

In a fourth example, he shared how it can be used for stop-arm violations when a vehicle passes a school bus. The AI camera will recognize the violation and capture the license plate number of the violating vehicle.