Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:04 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:55 And good evening. Thank you for joining disability and progress, where we bring you insights into ideas about and discussions on disability topics. My name is Sam I'm. The host of the show. Charlene doll is my research team. Good evening. Charlene. Who do you bring everybody tonight? Good maps. The talk about both outside and indoor maps. Uh, we have founder and CEO of good maps. Uh, Jose Gaz, Tam B day. Did I do that? Right?
Speaker 2 00:01:28 We
Speaker 1 00:01:28 Are also have Mike May and Mike is the chief evangelist of good maps. Is Mike Mahan here yet?
Speaker 2 00:01:36 He'll be joining momentarily. Okay,
Speaker 1 00:01:38 Excellent. Well, Mike and I had to say go way back. So it's kind of fun too. You just don't know who you're going to run into in, um, in the community, you know, or in the world. It's a small world and we appreciate you guys joining with good maps, talking about the promise of accessible indoor maps. Um, I want to start with, I guess I'll start with you since you're on Jose. Can you give us some history of how you came to good maps and how, um, it got a start?
Speaker 2 00:02:14 Yeah, absolutely. So we were born out of the American printing house for the blind, uh, and APH had their accessible navigation app nearby Explorer, uh, in decided that accessible navigation was, was so complicated and, uh, was, there was so much to do so many advancements to make, but it was really worth having an outside separate organization that was completely focused, uh, on that task. And so they created our company, which at the time was called, uh, access Explorer and is now called good maps because we realized the importance of indoor mapping in order to achieve accessible navigation. Uh, and so as APH was searching for a CEO, they were looking for somebody who had experienced both in the private and in the social impact space. Uh, and I was coming from a career in consulting and a CEO of a tech company, uh, and had done a fair bit in impact investing and as a peace Corps volunteer in central America. Uh, and so we just both kind of realized that the fit was perfect and I signed on right away.
Speaker 1 00:03:15 You have some amazing, interesting background.
Speaker 2 00:03:20 Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:03:21 You, uh, I just want to tell people you swam the English channel.
Speaker 2 00:03:27 Yes, ma'am, that's right with no wetsuit with no wetsuit.
Speaker 1 00:03:32 Like I would, my first thought was, wow, he's insane.
Speaker 2 00:03:39 Uh, that is around 60 to 62 degrees Fahrenheit.
Speaker 1 00:03:43 Dang. And where's the cutoff for hyperthermia or hypothermia?
Speaker 2 00:03:48 Uh, you know, I never asked that question. Uh, I don't, I don't know how, how close we were to it. I don't know the answer to that question. The distance as the Crow flies, it is, uh, about 19.8 miles, but you never end up going a straight line. It's always a little bit of a, of a loop. So I think we ended up doing around 26 miles.
Speaker 1 00:04:09 Wow. That's so funny. Cause that sounds so much like a Mike Mae statement as cruel. Um, well, that's pretty amazing. I, it's funny because you two both have really, uh, amazing, you know, abilities. Um, Mike, I just want to say, has, I think the, the record for skiing downhill for blind people, 65 miles an hour, I believe it is. I thought that was so crazy. I don't know that I would even think about that challenge. So
Speaker 2 00:04:44 Yeah, he is a wild man that's for sure.
Speaker 1 00:04:46 Well, I think he did it when he was pretty young too, so, you know, it's like, well, it is interesting when you're young and fearless, so, um, is he with us yet?
Speaker 2 00:04:58 Uh, he is still working on, on joining our analysts.
Speaker 1 00:05:00 So I think we'll just keep going. And I just want to ask you then, so what are the platforms that, um, good maps does work on?
Speaker 2 00:05:11 Yeah, so we are currently available on iOS and we will be available on Android by the end of the year.
Speaker 1 00:05:17 Ah, okay. And are you thinking about like, I don't know if windows phone is even doing much anymore, but are you thinking to extending anywhere past iOS and Android? Like would you be workable on a PC or would there really no. Be no point in doing that?
Speaker 2 00:05:38 Yeah. So the navigation application, as it currently exists will probably not end up on PC, but there will be navigation features, uh, that we will eventually be available to folks on PC or really through any kind of web based access.
Speaker 1 00:05:53 It looks like, um, the outdoor part of the mapping was good maps kind of let's either Apple maps or Google maps kind of handle that outdoor part. Um, are there any differences or what does good maps bring to that, that part, right?
Speaker 2 00:06:11 Yeah. On the, on the outdoor side, there's a few things that, that we really bring. I think that the most exciting of which is, uh, intersection announcements. Uh, so as you're, as you're navigating down the street, just being made aware of what cross street you're, you're coming up to.
Speaker 1 00:06:26 Okay. And so if you have, if I'm at the corner of 34th and 40th, it will say the cross street there.
Speaker 2 00:06:36 Yeah. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. As well, as well as how close you are.
Speaker 1 00:06:40 Does it tell you, Oh, it tells you how close that's right. And does it tell you like how many lanes, like, maybe like this is a two lane or whatever,
Speaker 2 00:06:50 Uh, you know, it does not, but that's a great idea. We've never had anybody else that can I get credit for that? Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:06:58 So, um, what speeches, the good maps using on their platforms? Like the speech that, that the app uses, will it be using the regular, like Google maps speech or is it using another scent?
Speaker 2 00:07:16 Yeah, so the, so the user has the, has the choice of what speech they want to listen to. So it's really just according to the settings on the phone.
Speaker 1 00:07:25 Ah, gotcha. Excellent. Um, tell me, what's your definition of an indoor map? Like what would you, how would you define that?
Speaker 2 00:07:39 Yeah, you know, it's interesting, it's actually not terribly dissimilar from an outdoor map. It's ghost for the insides of a building, as opposed to the, the roads and the streets and the, and the mountains and, uh, the things that you traditionally see in a, in an outdoor map. Now, the trick is that for indoor mapping, it's significantly tougher to achieve than, than outdoor mapping because you're constrained by the, the walls and the, uh, and the makeup of the, of the building. And so historically, uh, even though we've done a wonderful job of mapping the outdoors, we've really barely begun the process of mapping the indoors and that's what we're all about.
Speaker 1 00:08:14 So it feels like, you know, at outdoor maps, if you've done a good job with, with it, and what's your app that it tells you fairly basic things, you know, the street you're coming up to, uh, what might be around you, you know, as you said, the cross street, now you're announcing things like that. Um, but are there basic things that are just a given that the indoor maps are, that you were planning on having the indoor maps announced?
Speaker 2 00:08:44 Yeah, it's a great question. The things that you care about indoors are obviously very different than the things that you care about outdoors. So for example, in a museum, you might be trying to find a particular exhibit or in an you're trying to find your gate or the TSA security line or in your office. You're trying to find where Steve is or where Mike is. Um, and we can't use the same kind of system that you use for outdoors, which is to really use a street-based approach. Uh, and so what you, what you do is have to get really accurate on your positioning. So as you tell somebody to turn right down a hallway, they can have confidence that there is in fact, a hallway there for them to turn down. And the POS that you searched for in the search bar, uh, rather than being street names or addresses are Mike's office, Steve's office, water fountain, restroom, uh, and you search for them the same way you would for an outdoor map.
Speaker 1 00:09:33 And it seems like you have, um, both hardware and software to, you know, that you're creating on an indoor map. So how does this work?
Speaker 2 00:09:44 Yeah, so the very first thing that happens is one of our mappers goes through a building with a, with the LIDAR backpack. It looks a lot like the Ghostbusters backpack.
Speaker 1 00:09:54 Can you explain the term LIDAR?
Speaker 2 00:09:56 Yeah. So LIDAR stands for light detection and ranging. Uh, and if you think about it, there's like a little wand and it's got lasers at the tip of it, and it is shooting out pulses of light and then measuring wherever those pulses of light meet resistance. And it's doing that several hundred thousand times per second. And so the output is this really wonderful, what we call a point cloud, which is basically a collection of all of those little points of light, where they found, uh, where they found objects and that we're able to identify the inside of the building and map the building based on those points of light that we collected.
Speaker 1 00:10:31 Okay. Um, so have there been other indoor successful mappers? And if so, can you talk about the difference between theirs and yours?
Speaker 2 00:10:45 Yeah. Uh, indoor mapping has not really taken off in this country yet. And part of the reason is that the historical or the traditional way of mapping the indoors was very manual, uh, which made it really costly and really expensive and really difficult to scale. And so we think that using LIDAR, uh, really reduces the amount of time that it takes to create a map, whichever comes a lot of the historical hurdles of mapping to give you an idea that there is a, a medium size library here in Louisville that APH mapped, uh, during their nearby Explorer days. Uh, and it took a team of two, about two and a half weeks to, to map that, uh, library, uh, it took our map or 17 minutes to walk through it with the LIDAR device in another day or so of processing and, and layering on top of it, all of the relevant points of interest.
Speaker 2 00:11:34 So it's just a really incredible time savings. I would say. The other thing that we're doing that's really different and really exciting is about positioning, how we identify where somebody is on that map. Uh, as you probably know, Sam GPS doesn't work in doors. It doesn't make its way through building materials. And so historically people have relied on things like Bluetooth or wifi fingerprinting, which are expensive and cumbersome, and frankly not very accurate. Uh, we're using a camera based system that gets us to about one meter of accuracy and it doesn't require the installation of any kind of equipment whatsoever.
Speaker 1 00:12:07 Wow. So let's talk about, I want to go back to that mapping the library. Talk to me about that process. He came with a, with a backpack and what did you do?
Speaker 2 00:12:18 Yeah. So we walked through the space with the backpack, the same way that you would, if you were just a visitor,
Speaker 1 00:12:25 Every aisle.
Speaker 2 00:12:27 Yes, yes. We went down every aisle. We went down, uh, all of the, all of the stairs. Uh, you know, you really have to explore the space, uh, because the, the LIDAR works on a line of sight. So if it doesn't have visibility to a space, I can't map the space. Um, at that point we take all of that data. That's sitting in the backpack and then we upload it to some software that turns that raw data into the point clouds that we use. Uh, and then we go through a process of effectively slicing, uh, taking horizontal slices of those point clouds to define the floor plans. And we turn those into the 2d floor plans. And then we go through and we labeled all of the different points of interest. Here's the water fountain, here's the restroom, here's the fiction stack and the nonfiction stack, so that when you search for things other available on the map, and we can take you to them,
Speaker 1 00:13:16 Why could share, use that in our library? We have four floors and there's a library desk on each floor, but ha are they in the same place? Why, no, they're not. So you could be literally walking around the middle of the library, looking for the one that you know is on this floor, but if you can find, you know, where the aisle breaks and where they are. So, uh, yeah, that's a great deal. So I, I take that map and download it and I go into the Louisville library. And how many floors is that library? Two floors. Is there anything special about the second floor? I mean, is there anything that I would find set if I wanted to go find something on the second floor? I don't know. What's on the second floor, so let's just say, I presume I could have it download the app and tell it to find the escalator or elevator, whichever that it has a prison. Maybe it has both, um, and go up there and, and how would it direct me? It would tell me, would it actually tell me point for point turn, go forward. This many feet, take a left.
Speaker 2 00:14:33 Yeah. I will hand the user experience question over to bike. He's really excellent. That's okay. Mike, go for it.
Speaker 3 00:14:39 Yes. It's exactly how you described it. You're getting turn by turn directions. And that's one of the big advancements over this experience that you're getting today, versus let's say even a year ago, when most information indoors that was being delivered, it wasn't as accurate, but it was also based on as the Crow flies or as we say, getting warmer.
Speaker 1 00:15:02 So how many businesses are currently on board with, um, you know, that you've mapped so far and are they all in the U S
Speaker 3 00:15:11 W we're we're just starting the mapping process. We released our product in September. So our lists,
Speaker 1 00:15:18 I really thought you guys knew. So I, it means
Speaker 3 00:15:22 App is in good shape. The database of what we have so far is fairly short. Um, people probably don't realize that they've been using indoor maps in a, in a fundamental way for a while. When you walk through an airport and somebody calls up a map of a sighted person, calls up a map of how do I get from one gate to another?
Speaker 1 00:15:44 Yeah, right. No, on your phone. Oh, on the phone. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:15:49 So it'll show a map how to get from one gate together. That means that, uh, airport has mapped a lot of baseball, stadiums are mapped, but just as with GPS, when they first started mapping in the early two thousands, these maps are getting better, more accurate. And so when you have a LIDAR system, that's doing the mapping, you're going to get something a lot more precise than what you did with previous mapping system.
Speaker 1 00:16:15 So can you take like those airport maps and easily transpose or transport them into your mapping system?
Speaker 3 00:16:23 We're, we're working on exactly that approach. I mean, our whole, our main thrust is, is the user interface being accessible for blind people. And map mapping is one way to expand the buildings because not that many buildings that are mapped around the world, we want to expand the number of buildings and at the same time, make sure our maps and anybody else's maps are accessible. And Jose has a great term for how we share our data.
Speaker 2 00:16:53 Yeah. We like to think of it as a rising tide lifts, all boats, you know, w we came to realize early in our process, uh, that there really are so few indoor maps available, and we think we've cracked the code on how to create, not just a platform, but a process that helps facade that. Uh, and I think what that means is that we have an obligation to share those maps with other accessible navigation apps. Um, you know, w we're really proud of the application that we've created, and we hope that people enjoy it, but other people are tied to the apps that they currently use. And so we, we fully expect to offer those maps to other platforms because people deserve choice.
Speaker 1 00:17:29 So do you, can businesses map their own business or do they need the specific equipment that you guys use?
Speaker 2 00:17:38 Yeah, unfortunately we, we really do need the specific equipment that we use. It's, it's, it's pretty, um, uh, cutting edge and cumbersome and, uh, pretty finicky. Uh, so we we've been training for a while on them and they're, they're, um, they, they require trained folks. Right.
Speaker 1 00:17:55 What does the indoor mapping look like in other countries? So are there any other countries that are ahead of us or is this really just a new thing that you guys stumbled on and are running with?
Speaker 2 00:18:08 Yeah, I would say that there's really not any country out there that is further ahead than we are on indoor mapping. Um, I will point out that both Israel and Canada, uh, th their versions of the ADA require the kind of technology that, uh, that we are creating in their buildings in Canada, it's for any building that receives federal funding of any kind. And so we're seeing a regulatory requirement starting to creep in that hopefully is going to make this kind of mapping technology more widely available and, and allow people to focus on it. Uh, but everybody struggles with the same thing that we described earlier, which is, you know, the technology hasn't historically been there to make these maps cost efficiently.
Speaker 1 00:18:53 Well, I know somebody in Canada, they're never going to, let me hear the end of this. Um, can you tell me, so they are automatically mapping their buildings? Or how does this go?
Speaker 2 00:19:04 No, they, they have to, um, contract with a, with a service provider like us in order to map those programs.
Speaker 1 00:19:10 Ah, both Israel and Canada.
Speaker 2 00:19:13 That's right. And for Canada, that law is just starting to come into effect. It was passed about a year ago, and those requirements are just coming into effect. My colorings have been free. It was real, it's been a few years.
Speaker 3 00:19:23 It has. And I think one of the benefits of an Israel is when you have a smaller country, it's a little bit easier to implement these things. And then as with any law, the question is how does it get enforced? And so that remains to be seen in Canada, uh, you know, how they're actually gonna push this to be done and what are the repercussions, if they don't
Speaker 1 00:19:47 Well, and we're dealing with that all over the place with the ADA things, right? Yeah. Even ADA, even some basic things like website accessibility, how do you enforce? So that will be an interesting, uh, I, I hope better than how it has been going. I do have a question for you. I found that title a very interesting, and I'm seeing it pop up a little more. Now that chief evangelist, tell me what that means to you.
Speaker 3 00:20:16 Well, for me, it really is. It's part of what it takes in order to promote accessibility and promote navigation. These are two things that need evangelizing. So in a practical sense, it means selling, promoting, advocating all of those things to really advance those two topics.
Speaker 1 00:20:40 Excellent. So you are kind of the one that brags about good maps and the process. Sure.
Speaker 3 00:20:48 Right. This is something I've been doing for 25 years. So, um, it's a, you know, it's a glorified soap box and, uh, that's why we appreciate the opportunity to talk to your listeners about it.
Speaker 1 00:20:59 So I want to go back to more the in, in store or in business mapping and building mapping. Maybe that's what we should call it. A two, because it's fascinating. There are so many different kinds of places you're right. That it would be very difficult to make a quote mold and have it, you know, just plop in the things because there's so many different things that you might need for that. What happens, uh, let's just take target or any type of department store that you mapped. You might map, you can help me out here if I've missed important things, but like dressing rooms, bathrooms, drinking fountains, maybe break rooms, maybe although the public wouldn't necessarily need to know certainly customer service counters and the counters where you pay for things, what happens about the Isles shoes, clothing, and then what happens when they changed them?
Speaker 2 00:21:55 That is such a great question, Sam, and it speaks to one of the things that's really tricky about indoor mapping, uh, the walls and the ceilings, and even the doors tend not to change, but the things that happen within those walls do change to your point like a target. Uh, and that's one of the reasons that we're really excited about the approach that we're taking, being camera based, uh, because with things like the AR kid and a lot of what we're seeing, uh, in, in artificial intelligence and image recognition are going to allow us to dynamically update the items that are in that map. So for example, I can tell you that there's a meeting room, but when you walk in that meeting room, how do you know what the table is? How do you know where the chairs are? How do you know where the available chairs are? And by using somebody's camera, what we can do is allow you to scan and actually identify where those are. That's a little bit more tricky in a grocery store, because there are so many dynamic objects, but so long as the store is actually tracking way, or they are moving things, which many of them are doing these days, we can reflect that in our maps.
Speaker 1 00:22:58 So talk about what that means to track where you're moving things.
Speaker 2 00:23:02 Yeah. So, you know, let's take a Kroger or a grocery store, perhaps on Monday, the salsa is on aisle 14, and then they switched some things around. And now it's on aisle 20. Oftentimes there is a backend computer system that's tracking those. And so long as we can get access to that backend system, as soon as they reflect that in their technology, we can reflect it in ours.
Speaker 3 00:23:24 Yeah. They have to keep track of that for their own inventory purposes. And there, there are high-end industrial and systems, multimillion dollar systems. You mentioned target, of course, that's a Minneapolis company. And in their 2000 stores, they have positioning built into their lights, into their led lights. Also you're working with a camera and they don't use that much for consumers yet. We assume they will in the future, but it helps a lot in inventory tracking and the staff knowing where to stock things and so forth. And they have accuracy under a meter.
Speaker 1 00:24:04 And so your maps would kind of use that
Speaker 3 00:24:07 We can work with them, but those are such expensive systems that smaller venues, libraries, museums, and so forth. They can't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lighting systems. Uh, and we can, we provide an alternative to that.
Speaker 1 00:24:25 I noticed that in front of a lot of the companies, there's, there's beacons talk about the beacons in front of those public entrances and, um, how they work and what they're hooked up to, if anything,
Speaker 3 00:24:40 Yeah. The beacons are what have been installed for indoor navigation in the last six, eight years or so. And they provide variable accuracy and that word variable is particularly scary for a blind person. You really want to know, is it 10 foot accuracy or 30 foot accuracy? And then, you know, what, what you have to deal with in the case of GPS it's 30 feet or more. And so, you know that with, uh, with the Bluetooth beacons that you're talking about, that variability made them really not very helpful when you started hooking apps up to them and guiding people around. And so the camera based system is the next step, the next generation in more accurate, reliable positioning and mapping indoors.
Speaker 1 00:25:30 So the beacons are just a leftover and a sensor. They don't work with your cameras necessarily.
Speaker 3 00:25:36 Well, we will use a beacon out a door to help with the transition from outdoors to indoors, but instead of having to have 50 beacons in a building, we could have one at each insurance. And that's it,
Speaker 1 00:25:50 The LIDAR sounds like it's ju it's one of the big things that helps you be able to do as much mapping in an indoor facility as you can. Am I correct in saying that? Absolutely. So is this new or has just nobody thought of it?
Speaker 2 00:26:11 Uh, you know, what's really funny is LIDAR has actually been around as a technology for several decades, I think going back 50 or 60 years now. Um, but what's really propelled LIDAR and actually made it possible for us to use, uh, is that it is the under girding technology. You have a lot of the autonomous vehicle work that is going on. We love talking about autonomous vehicles. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, these big companies and a lot of VCs are just pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into and making it better and making it smaller and making it faster and making it cheaper in that is trickling down to benefit those of us who aren't worried about LIDAR in the sense of a car, but, but more in the sense of a, of a backpack. Um, and so, you know, to give you an idea of just how quickly things are changing and the LIDAR world, when we bought our first LIDAR device about a year and a half ago, we were generating about 45,000 points per second. That's how many arrows are at lasers shootout of the LIDAR device and the unit that we're using now it's at around 600,000 points per second. So we have multiplied by 15, the output of the LIDAR device. And it's really just, uh, by benefit of what's happening in the autonomous vehicle space. And even the iPhone 12 has LIDAR in a very rudimentary way, their starting data, reducing it and helping in taking pictures.
Speaker 1 00:27:34 So, um, I'm glad you said that because, so when you have your app, will you have it be like only working on X iPhone platform to the latest, or will you try to have it work as low as, I mean, how low will you go in your platforms, do you think?
Speaker 2 00:27:53 So our official testing, uh, goes as far back as the iPhone seven, uh, and that is the, the oldest model that we will officially support. We have done some testing on the iPhone six, uh, and it works just fine, but in terms of official support, the iPhone seven is where we'll stop. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:28:11 Well, for all those people who will poopoo me, I loved my six. I recently gave it up, but I did love it. Um, so, but now I've, I've grown up a little bit, so I want to, so you're going to have it on Android by when,
Speaker 2 00:28:28 By the end of this year, two months or less,
Speaker 1 00:28:31 A lot of different phones with Android. So how will you, how will you deal with that? Are they mostly, there'll be on a similar platform or on a similar, um, update, you'll go by update then.
Speaker 2 00:28:44 Yeah. So we're, we're testing and supporting the, uh, the four or five most commonly used Android forms. And those would be the ones where the, where the app works perfectly. I'm sure there are many, many more will, it will work as well. Uh, but we just won't be officially supporting those, but we'll, we'll get about 95% coverage of the available Android devices.
Speaker 1 00:29:03 I'd like not to, um, state monetary value, but will this be a free app for users or will they have to pay
Speaker 2 00:29:12 It is free for users? We think, uh, it's just really important that people who are blind or visually impaired not pay for information, the rest of us get for free. This, this should be a public utility.
Speaker 1 00:29:23 Oh, free is my favorite four-letter word. So I always like that. Um, so can you talk about the phone positioning? Cause I find it interesting with the LIDAR. It must be maybe picky. I don't know. When are you, when you're using the indoor, are you holding the phone out, like in front of you? How, how can you, how much can you get away with, with having the phone in a pocket or in something? Talk to me about how that works.
Speaker 3 00:29:54 Yeah. You do have to have the camera exposed and in a pocket I do use mine in an airport with other apps, like seeing AI will even read the Gates. And if I'm using an IRA, I like it in a pocket. Not every shirt has one. Um,
Speaker 1 00:30:10 So especially,
Speaker 3 00:30:12 So a lanyard can work, uh, or there's a pouch you can put on a backpack strap, which is my other favorite way to use it, uh, does have to be exposed. But the good news is it doesn't have to see a hundred percent of the environment. Uh, so if you're blocked temporarily, you pass somebody, um, that's not going to be an issue in terms of what the camera sees and the lighting, uh, you know, it can't be pitch dark, but, uh, if you have low lighting, it's not going to be a big issue.
Speaker 1 00:30:44 I presume it can tell you when you're drifting
Speaker 3 00:30:49 Off
Speaker 1 00:30:50 Course. Like how does it tell you if you're getting kind of off course?
Speaker 3 00:30:55 Well, I think, um, I'm just going to tell you where you are and you, you're going to determine are you off course or not? The system does have some drift and it it's correcting for that itself and that's transparent to the user, but if you're walking along and you're assuming this meter accuracy, and it says, uh, turn in 20 feet, um, you know, it might be 18 feet. Um, but you're going to adjust for those things yourself.
Speaker 1 00:31:26 Well, it's probably not made for this, but I'm wondering, is there any sense of adding the idea of like, if you're going to hit something that it tells you object in front of you or that would have to be in the map? I guess I'm just curious to
Speaker 3 00:31:42 The camera. Yes. So I'm
Speaker 1 00:31:44 Curious if it, if you've thought about having it, be able to tell you if you're going to slam into something
Speaker 3 00:31:52 It's dangerous and we think about lots of things. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:31:56 I'd love to be in one of your meetings, because I was thinking about that, boy, you could deal with those head height, things that are just the killers to me. Um, I mean, anything's bad that you hit, but, uh, especially those face high, you know, things that sometimes guide dogs don't see and certainly canes don't. Um, so I was just curious if you've gone there,
Speaker 3 00:32:22 It's not meant for obstacle detection yet, but you think about what a camera can detect. Um, I'm, I'm particularly interested in crowd detection and clumps of people in these days of having to do physical distancing. I'd like to know my approaching a clump of people. And if there's room, I can tell my dog, you know, right, right. And try to go around them. That's not something we're doing yet, but you can see how it could head in that direction.
Speaker 1 00:32:50 I, I, I have to cheat and tell you had a shepherd that used to take her own, uh, remedy to that. In part, the crowd is actually take her head and say, get good over. And, um, I used to, I used to be a little bit, um, you know, embarrassed when my instructors and say, what are you letting her do? But after awhile, when, and when crowds take up the whole entire hallway, when they don't have to, or block it and entire escalator, when they shouldn't, I'm like you get what you deserve, that's in like
Speaker 3 00:33:20 A cold nose on somebody's bare legs.
Speaker 1 00:33:22 Exactly. So, um, that's interesting. I do like that. And I, and you know, the, even, although I don't know where if you would even want to go anywhere near this, but the facial recognition has been being played with, with a number of apps, as well as, as well as even your phone. Um, what's your own. But, you know, with other products out there that are playing with recognizing faces of people, you know, so I'm not sure if that's even thought of being put in the app, but,
Speaker 3 00:33:59 Well, I'd love to have people record and not necessarily face recognition, but there's other ways besides that, to know that since we all have Bluetooth on our phones and then has our identity, and if we want to share that identity, it would be nice to know it, Sam, you and I could pass each other and maybe have in the Minneapolis airport and not know it. So people recognition app could definitely do that.
Speaker 1 00:34:26 Fascinating. Yeah. So there's so many places that you could go with this. I think it'd be almost hard to not get off track with this. Um, I wonder if, do you have ideas of, um, using this map for other things besides just blind people?
Speaker 2 00:34:52 Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's a really, really good question and a really important question. Um, you know, there, there are 5% of venues that are going to install this kind of technology because it's the right thing to do because it's mission aligned, but how do we get into the other 95% of venues? What kind of value can we bring with these indoor maps beyond accessible navigation? And one of them is frankly just cited navigation. Uh, there's a, there's a real need for navigation for anybody in a, in a hospital or in an airport. Uh, we were just in the hospital over the new year, welcome welcoming my son into the world. And, uh, I got lost every day that I was in there. Uh, I went to, yeah, I would have loved to have been able to find the cafeteria or do the cafeteria hours or get to, uh, you know, our doctor's office more quickly.
Speaker 2 00:35:39 There's a real there. Um, and there's other really interesting, really compelling things that, that you can do with these maps. Um, we we've started developing a first responder focused version of, uh, and we've been interviewing firefighters. I'll never forget this. I had one who said to me, if I had this kind of tool, I would have attended far fewer funerals over the years. And, uh, yeah, that's a moment that you don't soon forget. And you know, if you're a firefighter walking into a building, you've never walked into that, that's inherently dangerous. And, um, so if we can give them some sense of the building layout, where the dangerous materials are, what they are, what the, what the building is made of, they can really approach that building with a, with a sense of strategy that they couldn't otherwise do.
Speaker 1 00:36:26 I suspect that if you can, um, glom on to that, you can get more and more businesses to, and, and some of this will be city and state to kind of channel into that and send money towards making that accessible for those other people as well.
Speaker 2 00:36:47 Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. And, you know, w we talked about the firefighters that's obviously really important. Um, but I think there's there's value for other first responders as well. If you read the, the after action report of the Parkland Florida shooting, uh, there were, uh, about nine fatalities, uh, at that shooting that the people writing the report estimated could have been saved. The first responders have made it there quicker, or had been able to more easily identify who needed care. And so if you think about that, that's all happening in doors. Uh, there are gunshot identification systems that have not taken off because they generate this information and that happened nowhere to plot it. So if you combine our maps and our ability to read people to a very specific location with that gunshot identification, you're not going to present shootings, but you are going to increase the rate at which first responders can arrive on the scene and provide help.
Speaker 1 00:37:39 That's fascinating. Actually, I can see where you might meet a little bit of pushback from certain parts of peop you know, certain people. But I think that that's a great idea. So I presume you're really going to start pushing this. And if someone has a favorite mall or store or something that they just feel really needs to be mapped, what can they do?
Speaker 2 00:38:09 Yeah, absolutely. They can that they can reach out to us at, uh, info and good maps.com or reach out to their particular venue and have them reach out to us to get mapped.
Speaker 1 00:38:21 Now, presumably the place where they want mapped is going to be the ones to pay into this. So what will you, what do you guys do then to kind of convince them, is there anything that we, or the user can do beforehand? Can they go talk to them and then you guys will talk to them? Or how does that usually work or how do you approach them then?
Speaker 2 00:38:46 Yeah, well, I think everybody has to channel their, their inner Mike May, uh, and become the people of color community, but, you know, part of it is about it being the right thing to do. Uh, and part of it is about the benefits that come with the mapping beyond just the accessibility and the right thing to do. And that's why we're building things like the, like the visual navigation.
Speaker 1 00:39:08 Do you see a sense of this being built into the ADA or law or anywhere so that there is a little more teeth to be able to do this? That's the Holy grail. Yes, it is. Well, no, well, yes and no, right? Yes it is. But it's, you got to get it to be, you have to have consequences if they don't, but what, you know, but, but so are there plans of what to do to get it in place or, you know,
Speaker 2 00:39:44 Yeah. So, um, w we are working with a few folks in Washington, w we know that a rewrite or a refresh of the ADA is on the table and has been for a few years. And obviously the current conditions aren't really conducive to a lot of major legislation that we're gonna have to be alone. So we're going to have to be a little bit patient and, and wait for that window to open. And as soon as it does really pound the table for, for this technology,
Speaker 3 00:40:12 The highest probability is to convince venues that there's economic value to them and having disabled customers and having more convenience for side of the customers. I was surprised to hear from a hospital venue that their Medicare reimbursement rates are based on customer satisfaction. And if, if people can find their way around a hospital easier, they're going to be happier and they're going to then give higher ratings, which then translates into better revenue for that hospital.
Speaker 1 00:40:45 Excellent. And for, you know, like you talked about the, um, emergency texts and finding their way around the hospitals right. When they're bringing people there. So that's another thing, uh, I just want to basically touch on, because we've talked so much about LIDAR and how this works. Um, there must be some things that make certain indoor places difficult or next to impossible to map, uh, is lighting the only thing, or are there others?
Speaker 2 00:41:19 Yeah. Good question. Um, any place where the settings are often changing can be a little bit tricky, um, because the way that the camera based positioning works is it takes pictures, uh, from the venue that we mapped. Uh, and it does something called scraping, which is, uh, it basically says that there's this color here. There's this angle here, there's this shading here. And then when a person is walking through that particular venue, they'll take the camera, a picture that they're seeing, and then try to match it with the pictures from the original scam. And so if that venue is constantly changing, then there might not be a good return on that picture, trying to be matched. Now, what our partner is working on is making that scan something that is constantly refreshing itself so that there isn't that issue with the pictures not returning, um, uh, a location. So, so the, uh, uh, short answer to your question is, um, in the near future, no, there shouldn't really be, uh, a space that's particularly difficult to map. We should be able to go pretty much anywhere.
Speaker 3 00:42:27 I don't have a place I can exhibit hall where you can map the building. It's like a big warehouse. And then for each conference, they set up the booths and different places. You have to be able to do mapping at the very last minute when they're making decisions about these things. But, you know, that's, that's a one-off if you consider that point, Oh, 1% of the world is mapped in doors, there's nowhere to go, but up.
Speaker 1 00:42:53 Ah, yes. Yeah. And the really they're thinking of the ACB and, you know, CA and those kinds of conferences, but also anybody who holds a conference similar to that, you know, doctors' conferences, all those places that have, you know, maybe exhibits that, do that. Um, wow. Well, this is great. I do, I am excited, but I feel like I've seen not very many, but some people come in with great excitement about how they're going to indoor map and it fizzles. So tell me your plan for keeping this going,
Speaker 3 00:43:30 Sam. That is the definition of the last 25 years of indoor mapping. It's exciting everybody, because everybody wants it. Everybody sees the value and then the mapping and the positioning are too expensive. They're not reliable, and it does fizzle, but that's happened, you know, that happened with voice recognition as well, starting in their late seventies. And it took 25 years before we really had true voice recognition. I think where we're at the point where we are turning that corner so that this is really going to be something viable.
Speaker 1 00:44:06 So you guys think you're there. Do you think that, that there's no going back and that, that it will actually come to fruition?
Speaker 2 00:44:15 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, and any entrepreneur has to approach a problem of the size what's, um, humility, but I really do think if you look at the, uh, at the technology where it is now versus where it was even two to five years ago, uh, w we are tackling this problem in the right, at the right time and Canterbury sensors, and LIDAR are the future of technology. It's where the investment is happening at Apple, Google, Microsoft, and all of the other tech giants. Uh, and so we're taking advantage of that for the, for the first time. Accessibility has a seat at the table early is taking advantage of the technology early and is going with the direction of the river instead of trying to swim against the current.
Speaker 1 00:44:54 And you're right. I mean, Mike, you're right, that this is, this has been a long time coming in and that everyone wants that. I mean, we've all walked into somewhere and says, where is the bleep is the, you know, wherever you're looking for. So, so, you know, we've all wondered how to get around somewhere. And I, and to me, it is just as much of a sighted problem as a, as a blind or visually impaired problem. Right. I don't think there's anybody that's immune to not being lost when they first come into a building and the ones that are lucky enough to walk up to a kiosk and just look at it and be able to know, you know, that's good for them. But, um, so I hope you're right. I am very excited about this, and I wish you guys, the best of luck. Is there anything else you'd like to leave us with?
Speaker 2 00:45:43 Well, in our, our sighted friends and customers, they can walk up to that kiosk. They see where it is and they walk off and they're lost. They can't find it. So I think this has a lot of value to all of us.
Speaker 1 00:45:55 Yes, that is so true. Yeah. Well, thank you guys very much for joining in. I really appreciate that. Um, this has been great. I, I, I want you to come back in a year and I want to hear where you are.
Speaker 2 00:46:11 We would love to thank you so much for having us get us into the greater mall mall of America.
Speaker 1 00:46:17 That's right. I, I I'm like you, you better be coming here. Thank you so much. This is Kathy I, 90.3, FM Minneapolis and cafe.org. This is disability and progress. The views expressed on this show are not necessarily those of cafe or its board of directors music you are hearing. Um, besides our theme is from Galen Lee, one of our local or not local, but yeah, she is local. One of our local favorites. She's up in Minnesota. Also. We were speaking with Jose <inaudible> and Mike May Jose's and CEO and founder of bitmaps McMahon is the key evangelist and Charlene doll. Thank you to her. She is my research, Annie RVU. She is my engineer. Thanks to all to listen. Thanks so much for listening. Good night.
