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Chief mobility officer of Michigan, the heart of the US automotive industry, says Israeli companies are reinventing transportation infrastructure.

“When we look outside of the United States for new technology, especially for mobility technology, there’s really only two places that have the technology applicable to the use cases that we have here,” says Trevor Pawl, chief mobility officer for the State of Michigan.

“The first is Europe and the second is Israel. It’s remarkable that Israel is the second market because of how small the country is population wise and geography wise,” Pawl tells ISRAEL21c after speaking at the EcoMotion international mobility conference in Tel Aviv.

Considering that the Michigan city of Detroit is the epicenter of America’s automotive scene – this is the birthplace of vehicle manufacturing as well as infrastructure such as traffic lights and lane markings — it’s significant that the state is looking to Israel for innovation in that sector.

While Israelis don’t have a history of car manufacturing, says Pawl, “they have a history of software engineering.”

And that’s key, he says, because “the automotive industry is being driven by four foundational platforms: autonomous technology, electric technology, shared technology and connected technology.”

All of which are Israeli areas of expertise.

In-road charging

One joint project is with Israel-based Electreon to build America’s first wireless charging road for electric vehicles.

“We’re seeing Israeli companies come in and help us solve problems but also help us realize that the horizon for future technology being integrated into the real world isn’t as far off as we think. And the perfect example of that is Electreon,” says Pawl.

“Once we saw other Electreon deployments in Sweden and in Israel, we knew that Electreon was a company that we wanted to work with in Michigan,” he says.

“As transportation infrastructure is being reinvented and we have money from the federal government to reinvent it, we are looking at what else could we do, aside from creating charging stations, to help fleet operators transition from diesel to electric. And one of those things is not having to wait half an hour at a charging station,” Pawl explains.

“We believe that Electreon’s technology will allow for continuous loops for things like delivery vans and transit vehicles. We’re deploying the first mile of road that charges a vehicle as it’s in motion, right here in Detroit, to go live next year. I’m almost certain that it’s not going to be the last mile.”

Kinetic charging

Michigan may also do business with ZOOZ Power (formerly Chakratec), an Israeli company whose Kinetic Power Booster (KPB) based on innovative flywheel technology can provide ultra-fast charging networks for electric vehicles.

“As we build out our EV charging network in Michigan, where much of the population is in the lower part of the state, we have some unique challenges with the grid,” says Pawl.

“This company has a contraption that is able to create its own kinetic energy, then make up the difference in that portion of the grid to ensure that a charging station, or two or three charging stations, are able to function in areas where maybe they wouldn’t otherwise.”

Pawl said that the state is looking into Israeli solutions for maritime mobility for recreation and industry as well, given that transportation on the Great Lakes is important to Michigan’s economy.

Michigan Israel Business Accelerator

Pawl emphasizes that Michigan is seeking Israel innovation in a variety of verticals, such as security, consumer goods and water and agricultural technologies, that generate local jobs.

The Michigan Israel Business Accelerator organizes trade missions a couple of times a year to facilitate matches between Michigan’s needs and Israel’s capabilities.

“Obviously, I only get involved in the transportation mobility side of it,” says Pawl, “and it was important that we brought some of the Michigan Department of Transportation lead consultants on innovative projects — whether for bridges or for the future of automated payments — to EcoMotion to see what was going on in real time with a clear focus on the market.”

The accelerator, he continues, “has boots on the ground in Israel, allowing us to have a presence at cool events such as EcoMotion and making sure that we’re meeting with high-level officials, going into the command centers for certain highways, and meeting with people that are trying to solve the micro-mobility congestion issue in cities.”

Looking at the direction in which the automotive industry and smart cities are moving, Pawl says, “there’s more synergy than you would immediately think. You can’t afford not to be having a constant dialogue with leaders in Israel’s public sector and private sector.”

Mobility and smart cities

Among the Israeli technologies piquing interest are data-driven digitized garbage collection from GreenQ, road noise cancellation technology from Silentium and AlgoShield, a real-time early warning lithium battery hazard detection and explosion-prevention solution.

“We’re getting a lot of questions from cities like, ‘Okay, if we’re going to be aggressively rolling out charging stations and electric vehicles on the road — General Motors is flipping over to all electric by 2035 — how are we going to handle the worst cases, such as battery fires? How do we prepare for the future?’

“Aside from making sure firefighters have the right technology and knowledge to work with a battery fire, the vehicle is going to have to take a major leap forward,” says Pawl.

“If you’re focused on trying to make sure that America not just leads the world in producing technologies and vehicles but also that it’s simply one of the best places to get around, I think Israel can help us find the way.”

Testing ground for Israeli technologies

In his speech at EcoMotion, Pawl said that Michigan, which borders Canada, is a valuable testing site for Israeli businesses entering the North American market.

“We understand that there’s other markets like Silicon Valley, and places on the East Coast that have venture capital markets, but to really prove out your technology you’re going to want to actually get it out in communities,” he explained.

“You’re going to want world-class testing sites at the earlier stage, and once you’re past that point you’re going to want to work with a government that’s willing to give you access to their infrastructure and that has regulatory policies where you can move at the speed of the market and get permits quickly.

“So while you may kick the tires at an automaker R&D lab in Silicon Valley, if you want to end up on a North American vehicle, you have to come through Detroit. And if you want to build a fleet, you’re going to have to access our supply chain,” he says, noting that Detroit houses the lion’s share of US automotive suppliers and automakers.

“This is paired with our commitment to, for instance, the Electreon project, opening up our infrastructure to help Electreon write their playbook in North America.”

Michigan also has North America’s first smart parking lab and is constructing America’s first signature EV route along Lake Michigan. The US and Canadian federal governments are seeking technologies to build better border crossings, Pawl says.

In addition, Michigan is building a 40-mile autonomous vehicle lane between Detroit and Ann Arbor, “which will be essentially the road of the future and provide hundreds of other opportunities for Israeli companies to insert their technology.”

Wireless V2X technology developed in Israel alerts motorists and two-wheel vehicle riders to each other’s presence.

An affordable device that alerts cyclists and scooter riders to the danger of unseen motorists could prevent many accidents globally, says Israel-based Autotalks.

The company uses V2X (vehicle-to-everything) technology to connect two-wheelers with other road users and warn them of each other’s presence.

The device, called ZooZ 2, gives a visual warning to two-wheel riders if a vehicle is approaching an intersection and could hit them. It also alerts them to drivers indicating a right turn who may be in their blind spot, and cars that jump a red light.

Drivers who have the device are likewise alerted to the two-wheeler. ZooZ 2 uses wireless technology so it can reliably detect two-wheelers even if the line of sight is obstructed.

The company says three quarters of bike and scooter accidents are caused by drivers failing to notice the two-wheeler – and it’s almost always the two-wheeler that comes off worse.

“Autotalks regards all road accidents as preventable, and those accidents involving bikes and scooters deserve special attention,” said founder and CTO Onn Haran.

“We’re committed to making our new micromobility safety device available immediately in order to save the lives of two-wheeler riders around the globe.”

Cyclists and scooter riders fit the device to their handlebars at a cost of $50 to $100 or it can come integrated on high-end models. ZooZ 2 currently communicates only with the 10% of cars that are V2X-enabled, but the technology is to be included in most new vehicles launched in 2025/26.

The first version of the ZooZ micromobility device was launched in September 2021. Autotalks says the updated version is undergoing validation tests by four manufacturers of bikes or their components, and by two vehicle manufacturers.

Autotalks showcased the ZooZ 2 device last week at the Velo-City Conference, the world cycling summit, in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The plug-and-play device uses software provided by US-based V2X specialist Commsignia and has been tested successfully by the European consortium Project SECUR (Safety Enhancement through Connected Users on the Road).

Autotalks has already produced similar technology for motorcycles and says the first motorcycle manufacturer will incorporate it into mass-produced models in Europe in 2024.

Israeli researchers from the Technion are developing a solution that addresses the shortages in seasonal harvesters: robots that pick fruit for us.

Throughout history, early summer has often signaled the time to harvest. Harvesting, of course, has evolved considerably. As opposed to ancient times when mobilizing the whole community was necessary to fully harvest grain, there are sophisticated machines nowadays run by just a few individual operators that quickly navigate through fields and efficiently process many acres at a time.

However, in the case of fruits, there is still a need for a great deal of manual labor throughout the harvesting process today, but workers are in short supply. The farming labor and resource shortage is reported in many countries across the world including the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Vietnam and Brazil. Unharvested produce leads to a loss of food quality and spurs enormous economic losses, a fact that will become more evident and problematic as the world population continues to increase. 

In a new Israeli study, researchers from the Technion developed a ground mobile robot that could drastically advance fruit agriculture and harvesting. The robot, whose development was led by Associate Professor Amir Degani from the Technion’s Environmental, Water, and Agriculture Engineering Department, will have the capability to use one or multiple small-sized drones to perform the operations required in orchards much more accurately and cheaper than the methods used by farmers today.

The study was recently presented at the “Water and Environmental Engineering in the Face of Climate Change” conference of the Environmental, Water, and Agriculture Engineering Department at the Technion’s Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering. 

The Need for Better Fruit-Picking Robotics

The gap between the number of seasonal laborers and the volume of work is expected to significantly expand as the world population continues to grow. By 2050 there are expected to be more than 9 billion people in the world, and in order to feed them all it will be necessary to increase the volume of food production anywhere from 35-60 percent (unless the whole world switches to a plant-based diet). 

One might expect though that with such a highly populated world there would be no shortage of working personnel, but sadly this is not the case.

“People have been moving from villages to cities for decades – and fewer people want to engage in manual labor,” Degani explains. “It’s seen in construction and agriculture, and it happens everywhere – including in countries with very large populations, like India and China. In India, for example, harvesting coconut is a very important task – but fewer and fewer people want to work in that field.”

According to him, the problem also exists in Israel. “As in many Western countries, there are quite a few years in Israel where apples fall to the ground because no one is there to pick them in time.”

Degani believes the solution to these problems lies in robots that know how to pick fruits. 

“Just as automation has solved many of the problems that plagued field crops, like using machines such as combine harvesters, once we adapt this strategy to plantations farmers will be able to better streamline and reduce the uncertainty that currently surrounds the acquisition of skilled seasonal labor for specific times of the year,” he says.

It is important to note that automating harvests should be approached differently than those used for field crops, which involve rough, large, and overly expensive machines. 

“In field crops, massive harvesting is carried out all over the area––usually indiscriminately,” says Degani. “Picking edible fruit should be gentle and selective. The fruits should be picked one by one and handled carefully.”

Interestingly, he claims that the robotic arms currently used in factories, which have a large range of motion and accurate precision capabilities that humans can only dream of, are not suitable for the task. 

“Although these robotic arms know how to perform a pre-planned operation, their sensing and decision making capabilities are limited and are not suitable for agriculture,” he says. “Agriculture is a more difficult world. Agriculture takes place in an uncertain environment with fluctuating changes in light and outdoor conditions, so the robot must have complex sensing and decision making capabilities.” According to him, the robot should not be too expensive of an alternative because otherwise many farmers will not be able to afford it.

Call in Air Support

Degani and his team began to approach the challenge of the harvesting robot’s development by first addressing its maneuverability in the orchard, a task more complicated than it sounds.

“In order for the robot to patrol and weave through all the trees and detect pests or ripe apples, for example, it must know where it exactly is,” Degani explains. The orchard environment is relatively homogeneous from a ground point of view, with most of the trees looking about the same and the GPS reception not being particularly reliable.

This obstacle gave rise to the idea of establishing a connection between a ground mobile robot and a drone. The researchers found that when utilizing the perspective of a low-flying drone, the top-view observation of the orchard provides a unique signature of every tree formed by the shape of its canopy. The first study on the subject was published in the robotics and automation section of the IEEE magazine. 

Currently, researchers are working on additional ways in which the farming robot can use small drones to perform the operations required for harvesting orchards. First, they demonstrated that a drone could hover around a tree, creating a detailed three-dimensional image of each of the trees in the area. These are needed to make the harvesting process more efficient and reflect more modern model of precision agriculture.

“The meaning of ‘precision agriculture’ is that instead of making decisions on issues relating to things like fertilization, irrigation, thinning, pest management, or harvesting at the entire field level, we will look at the agricultural plot at a higher resolution and make such decisions down to the individual tree level,” explains Degani.

This will make it possible to increase the volume of produce, by providing the best conditions for each individual tree, and beyond that, save the use of resources such as water, fertilizer, and potentially dangerous pesticides.

Degani believes the solution lies in the capabilities of a ground mobile robot that knows how to navigate around the wood, perform precise mechanical operations, and even pollinate flowers––another separate project currently under development in the laboratory.

A Shift From Human to Robot?

Today, Degani’s studies are in the prototype stage, and they demonstrate possibilities for future development. In any case, there are already several automation attempts in the fruit harvesting industry represented by Israeli companies such as FFRobotics, a robot equipped with the ability to emulate human hand-picking, and Tevel Aerobotics Technologies, which developed a flying harvester that is scheduled to enter its pilot phase in the coming year.

Beyond that, not only is the identity of the harvester expected to shift from human to robot – but the structure of the orchard itself is also speculated to change.

“The way we engineer and grow trees will change, and they will be designed in a way that is right for robotic harvesting,” Degani explains. “Even today you can see in the world apple orchards that look almost like a two-dimensional wall on which fruit grows. This is not genetic engineering but mechanical engineering operations designed to make the orchard grow as efficiently as possible.” The new orchard structure allows for denser planting and is designed to enable easier harvesting for both humans and robots alike. Studies are currently underway to determine the most efficient configuration, in preparation for an era in which robots will enter the agricultural landscape.

In the end, according to Degani, everything is aimed at becoming more efficient simply because we have no other choice. 

“Even in modern agriculture, the farmer will be very important, but he will need much fewer working hands,” he says. “Like quite a few things, the data will be at the center, to help him make informed decisions, and the robots will carry out the tasks in the field. This is what will direct the efficiency so that we can reach a sufficient crop target that will feed all humans,” he says.

“Because there will be less land, less resources, and less manpower over time, there is a need to find a solution. Otherwise, fruits like apples will be accessible only to the very rich,” Degani concludes.