Ground vehicle automation with Mel Torrie

Interviewee

Mel Torrie, President & CEO at ASI Logistics, the company that helps you reach your potential, through innovative robotics solutions. He is an invited keynote speaker and trainer on the topics of Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Robotics, AI, and Machine Learning.

Transcript

Elisa Muñoz: Wow, interesting background. So you are an engineer right? 

Mel Torrie: I have a master's in electrical engineering and a minor in computer science.

Elisa Muñoz: And how was the beginning of ASI?

Mel Torrie: We spun off with two professors and four students and started in my garage and had a farm shed and so we brought the robotic tractor from deer out to my backyard and started to develop solutions for them from there.

Elisa Muñoz: Okay. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing. Curious to ask how  hard it was in order to find a product market fit at that time?

Mel Torrie: It's, it's brutal. It's still like trying to sell marijuana I think because it's still illegal in California to sell robotic trackers on the open market and so it's, it's tough. We went through multiple iterations of the product with the OEMs we bootstrapped. So we did not bring exit driven money but more strategic money from OEMs like John Deere and they have lots of challenges with the quarterly earnings being a public company and liability concerns with tractors hurting people. John Deere said their attorneys are sued every year where a farmer will disable a safety shield and hurt themselves even though it was their fault. Lots of lawsuits. And so that's probably held up the product market fit for the, for years and years. One of the biggest challenges.

Elisa Muñoz: I was going through the website and I discovered that you guys recently solved the issue of reversing in the trailers autonomously. So maybe can you talk a little bit about it?

Mel Torrie: Yeah, one of our markets is distribution centers for the monster retailers in the world that have like the FedExes and Amazons of the world that have all the trailers around these distribution centers and it's the most dangerous area where lots of people get hurt. And so they have asked and are paying for the development of a solution that will move those trailers around autonomously to help move the flow of material through the distribution channel.

Elisa Muñoz: And this was in collaboration with SICK, right? So I'm pretty sure that you guys have a lot of partnerships.

Mel Torrie: Yeah, where we haven't taken exit driven money from venture capital or private equity. Our only approach has been partnering. So we have partnered with the monster end users, the monster farmers and miners and logistics companies as well as these key technology providers like SICK that have been wonderful to work with. A solid solution we've used for, yeah, 25 years.

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Elisa Muñoz: What do you think these kinds of new releases or integrations mean for ASI?

Mel Torrie: Yeah, it's huge. Lots of near death experiences over the years and we finally have that perfect storm that sounds negative, but that alignment between the technology pricing, it's maturity, the labor demands, and that labor being probably the biggest that people just can't hire right now. And so we're finally at this point where the market has no other option. And so this announcement is one of those key scaling moments where we make them as fast as we can because they want them now. They need them, they're parking vehicles. All of our partners in these different markets are parking equipment cuz they can't find operators.

Elisa Muñoz: Okay. So correct me if I'm wrong, I understand that ASI provides solutions, right? So most of all it's software, but I was going through the website and I discovered that you guys have what it's like a vehicle automation kit. Yeah. So it's also hardware!

Mel Torrie: It is, yeah. We have to provide the whole solution and over the years, just like with the computer hardware journey with IBM PCs, eventually you start out as a full integrator providing everything and then Intel comes along and does the memory ship and then the hard drive guys come along and provide that part. And so we're in kind of that phase, but right now we have to provide everything. And so we have solutions that we automate the world's largest mining trucks and we provide the wire iron harnesses and the computer brains and the sensor solution to make these haul trucks drive by themselves or the farm tractor.

So we have to take existing vehicles and retrofit them. And that's important for companies like mining end users where they've got 5 million trucks that can last 20 years. They can't go buy the latest new vehicle to have autonomy on it already. They really, really need this solution that we can come in and just strap on.

Elisa Muñoz: It is a full integration. So during those years, what can you say has been the biggest technical challenge or challenge in general?

Mel Torrie:  Biggest technical challenge. Sensing is definitely one of the biggies that both the price point and the resolution and a mining truck, it takes about two football fields to stop 200 meters when you're going at 65 kilometers an hour with 400 tons in the back of your vehicle. And a 400 ton vehicle that's 800 tons moving 65 kilometers per hour on roads that are being watered to keep the dust down. So the sensing robustness to handle all the vibrations, but then the resolution to be able to see out that far and detect a kangaroo at three, 400 meters is quite a technical hurdle. And we're finally there. The sensors are struggling with being robust enough and so we may replace them more often than we would like, but I would say that's the biggie.

Elisa Muñoz: So talking about the pandemic, most of the companies in the industry  have survived, but they always share how hard it was this time for them. So what would you say it was the biggest challenge there? Talking about purchasing and procurement.

Mel Torrie: In the pandemic. Yeah, I would say the biggest challenge, well there's a lot, but one is just when we're deploying a 400 ton mining truck in Australia, thousands of miles away and we can't travel there. How do you do, especially for one off. So we did the Ukraine and Australia deployments in the middle of that and you can't send people there. So you have to train and provide enough documentation that without people being on the ground, you can automate these monsters that can run over your house. And so the safety is significant, the complexity, tens of harnesses and all lots of computers just how do you do that without ever meeting the people or seeing the equipment that you're automating. 

But luckily we had great success in that, but it sure stretched us and forced us to leverage different technologies to assure that the people on the ground could understand what we were asking them to do and could do it.

Elisa Muñoz: Well, I'm glad to hear that. I mean, it was a rough time, but at the, you give a twist, so I'm glad. Yeah. And talking about the next steps for the company, what would you say comes next?

Mel Torrie: I think excitingly it's the problem of scale, just supply chain, how do you make these as fast as humanly possible and really scale from product development company to making hundreds and thousands of something? It's a big shift for us, and I think the supply chain makes it harder. Some parts we just can't get and so we're having to prioritize which products get them, the key connectors or the key ships. So I think lots of industries are dealing with that. But yeah, an exciting problem to have. How do we build this monster production side of our organization fast enough to deliver to the demand that's out there?

Elisa Muñoz: Okay. And I mean about talking about new projects, are you guys planning on expanding or something anytime soon?

Mel Torrie: Yeah, we've got lots of excitement. I think we're, we're finally in a situation where we have to say no to a lot of opportunities. Okay. And that's, that's a bummer. I'm kind of a yes guy that we will find a way. So that's a wonderful problem. It's really now picking the right ones. But the labor shortage is so significant that we're getting demands across different applications and agriculture, construction, landscaping, logistics, and just more and more equipment. Like in mining, one of the, one of the sites it's a million dollars per year for a driver. So they have four different shifts and so it's a million a year that they can't supply the people for and they're gonna have to start paying more. And so every kind of equipment, every piece they need to get automated, they commit, never delay anyone off and they just retrain.

So in Australia they've retrained the truck drivers. And so now the ladies who are driving mining trucks are now at our command center 800 miles away operating from a computer interface instead of sitting in a cab. And we have to do more and more of that type of equipment. And so the opportunities are now doing the dozers and the graders and the, all the other types of equipment.

Elisa Muñoz: It is exciting. And from your perspective, where do you think the future of the industry is going?

Mel Torrie: What's happening in AI on the computer side with the AI we're putting on the vehicles, it really gets exciting because you're gonna be o you're gonna be optimizing these operations and so the focus is gonna be less on just getting the human out of the cab, but how do we optimize the flow of iron ore? The one mine we're working at, it's 8 billion a year, about a million dollars an hour of flow of iron ore out of their mind. And so how do we optimize that now that we have AI very predictable, deterministic operating of each of these vehicles, they're going the precise speeds that we want. Now how do you optimize that engine with complete control of all of the variables? So it becomes an optimization opportunity of less fuel, less impact on the environment, less compaction on the soil and farming, less traffic constraints and in construction. So optimization. Optimization. So that's the exciting part.

Elisa Muñoz: Well, glad to hear that. I'm pretty sure that's gonna be exciting as well. Yeah.

Mel Torrie: Definitely. Yeah, it's helping our customers be the leaders in the field of optimizing what they're trying to accomplish. And with humans in the past, now humans are observing and handling exceptions. It was very hard to get predictable performance, just getting 'em to show up. And then there was one gold mining company we worked with where they were losing 16 million a year because the drivers were slowing down three to four miles an hour in the morning at two to 4:00 AM in their driving shifts. And so now we can just keep that speed consistent and that saves 16 million a year just on that mine site. So those kinds of challenges where humans are being safer cuz they're tired, it's two in the morning, we can now eliminate that there at the command center just handling the, the exceptions that to show up.

Elisa Muñoz: And last but not least, I mean Mel, if you have a piece of advice that you can share to future presidents or CEOs starting on this path?

Mel Torrie: Yeah, I would say one of the biggest challenges is the prioritization of your, your investors, your partners, your customers, and your employees. And I would say you've got to make sure you only take money that aligns with putting people first. That's why we haven't taken private equity and venture capital where they sell your people to the highest bidder on the exit. They prioritize making money at all costs and burn people out. And that's why you see the terrible retention in Silicon Valley. Make sure you're bringing in the kind of money that lets you put the most important thing first, which are your people and they will take care of your customer and your shareholders.

Elisa Muñoz: Mel, thank you so much for being here, for taking the time. We highly appreciate it.

Mel Torrie: Thanks for having me. My pleasure.

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