Hitting the reset button…

NEWS

• ‘Zoom Towns’ are now a thing, and the Pittsburgh region has two: New Castle and Turtle Creek
• The Fund Midwest is coming to Pittsburgh
• WATT Fuel Cell and Peoples Gas celebrate in-home, clean electricity generation milestone
• Aurora Innovations partners with Toyota to pioneer robotaxis
• Marinus Analytics, working to end human trafficking, is a finalist for the IBM Watson AI XPrize Competition

Pittsburgh is the Brains of the Nation’s Automated Vehicle Industry

Getting behind the wheel is something most of us do daily. As humans, we are constantly processing the changing landscape as we drive, and taking your focus off the road for a few seconds can lead to long-term damage.

“You can’t just take a vehicle and have it navigate safely on public roads overnight,” explains Jackie Erickson, a founder of the Pittsburgh Robotics Network and senior director of communications at Edge Case Research. “It takes a very long time. We’ve been working on this problem in Pittsburgh for 30 years.”

Institutions in Pittsburgh have led the Autonomous Vehicle since the early 1980s, not only with their world-class expertise in robotics, but their focus on ground vehicles. 

How the Pandemic Offers a Reset Button for Cities and Regions

The pandemic has brought upheaval to the most routine aspects of our daily lives. For many of us, we’ve adjusted (more or less). But when it comes to economic growth, the opportunities are more complicated. That’s why cities and regions need to look at this as a chance to hit reset to achieve economic growth. 

The world is has changed. Industries like life sciences, manufacturing and automation are accelerating at faster rates because of the pandemic’s demands. Talent is migrating to new locations like never before, and if people aren’t moving they have in many cases permanently flexed their work environments. Processes have been adopted to integrate deep technologies, which will impact how places leverage assets and strengths.

So, as cities and regions, let’s hit the reset button and think about what a post-pandemic life looks like now and how it can be an opportunity to get on the fast track to recovery.