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City as Living Lab

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autonomous vehicles in Peachtree Corners
Technology Parkway is being reconfigured to create an intelligent mobility test track that will run alongside regular traffic. Entrances and brightly painted lanes are planned for this “living laboratory” being created by the city in partnership with Sprint. Rendering courtesy of City of Peachtree Corners

Intelligent vehicle test track brings the future, and the world, to Peachtree Corners

The little orange flags on stakes along Technology Parkway are modest harbingers of the huge change coming to the Peachtree Corners road.

The city is reconfiguring the road to create a 1.5-mile intelligent mobility test track that will be used to develop and test self-driving vehicles, intelligent mobility and IoT (internet of things) technologies. The test site is the only one of its kind in Georgia, and it may be the only one like it in the country.

Driverless vehicle testing is typically conducted in isolated research environments such as empty parking lots. But the test lanes on Technology Parkway will run alongside regular traffic, separated only by flexible bollards, or sticks, and interacting with vehicles and pedestrians at intersections.

“5G is a world of the future and we’re still trying to figure it out. So, testbeds and living labs like this … are absolutely vital to the growth.”
Cynthia Curry, director of IoT Ecosystem for the Metro Chamber

First announced a year ago, the research site is part of an economic development mission to help reinvigorate the technology park it winds through, Technology Park Atlanta.

Mayor Mike Mason
Photos by JASON GETZ/Getz Images

Mayor Mike Mason expects it do that and much more. “The short-term benefit is that it will provide an energy, a synergy, if you will, for high-tech businesses to establish their businesses in Technology Park to create and develop AV (advanced vehicle) technologies,” Mason said.

“Long-term, we see the Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners to have a ripple effect that expands well beyond our city limits to neighboring cities, counties, regionally and even statewide,” he said. “There is no other living laboratory like this in the state that is available for companies to research, develop and test their intelligent mobility concepts.”

Sprinting to Peachtree Corners

In January, communications giant Sprint signed on as a partner to the test track, bringing its super-fast, high-capacity mobile 5G to the city’s initiative and giving the site a trademarked name, “Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners.” 5G, the latest generation of cellular mobile communications, will provide the bandwidth needed to test vehicle-to-vehicle communication, vehicle-to-infrastructure communication and over-the-horizon warnings, Sprint said in a press release.

Curiosity Lab was first unveiled on Jan. 8 as one of three 5G, IoT partnerships announced by Sprint at the international Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The press release from the event quotes Ivo Rook, Sprint’s senior vice president of IoT, who said, “This is much more than self-driving cars.

“Sprint is bringing together Curiosity IoT, micropositioning and HD mapping, all enabled by our upcoming mobile 5G network, to develop and test the most advanced technologies in the industry,” Rook said, in the release. “We are honored to work with Peachtree Corners to drive AI, robotics and autonomous.”

Peachtree Corners officials showed video they shot at CES during a Jan. 15 press conference at City Hall, a facility that sits directly adjacent to the test track’s path at 310 Technology Parkway.

In an interview on the video, Rook says he is unaware of anything like Curiosity Lab. “What I love about Peachtree Corners is the fact that they’re bringing together a laboratory environment, an environment where companies can actually invest and try things out, but they’re marrying that with the real life,” Rook said. “So, this is the only initiative that I know where basically the test track meets the public road.”

Inquiries are coming in to Curiosity Lab from across the country. There’s interest in testing everything from drones, to solar panels on roads that charge electric vehicles as they drive, to robots that deliver packages and even individual flying machines. (Think “The Jetsons.”)

City Manager Brian Johnson

“People don’t realize — we didn’t until we got involved in this, too — there is a lot larger of an industry in the future to move goods by autonomous vehicles than people,” Peachtree Corners City Manager Brian L. Johnson said. “… All of this V2X, ’vehicle-to-everything,’ requires 5G because 4G does not have enough bandwidth to do this.” Vehicle-to-everything communication is the transfer of information between a vehicle and any entity that may affect the vehicle such as infrastructure, networks, pedestrians and other vehicles.

How it all started

Incorporated in 2012, the city of Peachtree Corners is a planned community that began in the late 1960s, with Technology Park Atlanta, a low-rise campus for high-tech industries, at the core of its 17 square miles. “Companies, specifically tech companies, are the bedrock on which this city was formed from,” Johnson said.

Legendary tech pioneer and Georgia Tech grad Paul Duke proposed Peachtree Corners as a way to attract engineering firms to Georgia and keep Georgia Tech engineering graduates from leaving the state to find work. And today, “The city’s focus on technology is citywide,” Johnson said.

Like many other cities, Peachtree Corners deploys smart city technology such as sensors that can alert when a parking space is available and sensors in public trash cans that can report when they need to be emptied.
Technology Park Atlanta is now home to 49 technology companies, 18 biotech businesses and 84 international companies.

“We have about 45,000 people and about 45,000 jobs,” Johnson said. “It’s very rare for a city to be in a one-to-one ratio scenario. You’re usually considered to be a jobs hub … or vice, versa, where you’re considered to be a bedroom community.”

Peachtree Corners’ robust business community is one of the reasons the city is able to have a full-service government that charges no city taxes, Johnson said. “Very few cities have no property tax,” he said, “and most of the ones that are like us are not near our size. … The healthier the [business] environment is, the healthier our non-business environment is.”

While the city’s origins are part of what led it to where it is today, the other driving force is the way Peachtree Corners approaches economic development, Johnson said. “There’s typically three conventional legs to economic development — recruitment, retention and expansion,” Johnson said. “This city has embraced a fourth leg, and that is creation.”

Becoming an innovation hub

In June 2017, the city approved plans to transform Technology Park Atlanta, commonly known as Tech Park, into a center for innovation.

“When we became a city in 2012, we didn’t inherit a high-tech hot spot. We inherited an aging, suburban office park,” Mayor Mason said, at the city’s Curiosity Lab press conference. “We knew that, and we were determined to change it, which led us to create the Innovation Hub Master Plan.”

The plan calls for research institutions, entrepreneurial training, professional networks, enhanced walkability, mixed uses and public spaces. The city aims to promote collaboration with like-minded business owners and employees in gathering places such as coffee shops and parks within Tech Park’s 500 acres.

Parts of a multiuse trail have been completed in the area. And the 295-unit Echo Lakeside apartment complex was intentionally built within Tech Park to enable millennials — who tend to want to live near their jobs — to walk or bicycle from home to their Tech Park offices.

Full time Prototype Prime consultant
Betsy Plattenburg and City Councilmember Alex Wright

Prototype Prime

Curiosity Lab is the second step in the city’s master plan to re-establish Tech Park Atlanta as an innovation hub. The first step was the city’s 2015 creation of the 25,000-square-foot technology incubator, Prototype Prime, directly adjacent to Curiosity Lab, at 147 Technology Parkway.

The nonprofit supports early stage technology startups with rental space and services such as legal and marketing assistance. Mason said it “epitomizes an innovation hub.”

“Prototype Prime was an empty building and a concept that is now a job creator, an event space, and an educational site,” he said.

A regional affiliate of the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at Georgia Tech, it’s one of three incubators and business accelerators now operating in the city, all of which are located within Tech Park. The others are privately owned.

After Prototype Prime’s launch, the city decided it would be advantageous for the incubator to target a specific technology, Johnson said.

From there, things happened quickly. City Council members settled on intelligent mobility. Betsy Plattenburg, who worked at ATDC and is a senior consultant to Prototype Prime, suggested adding a research component.

The city announced the intelligent mobility test track last April, committing to a $2 million investment. And today, Prototype Prime is recruiting startups across the country who can be connected with corporate partners in the self-driving vehicle ecosystem.

After the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce heard about the city’s intelligent mobility plans, Peachtree Corners representatives were invited to join the chamber’s delegation to the Smart City Expo held Nov. 11-15 in Barcelona, Spain.

Cynthia Curry, director of IoT Ecosystem for the Metro Chamber, spoke at the city’s Curiosity Lab press conference, saying it will provide vital opportunities for testing to move the IoT system forward and generate jobs.

“5G is a world of the future and we’re still trying to figure it out. So, testbeds and living labs like this … are absolutely vital to the growth,” Curry said. “We’re just thrilled to have this in our region. It helps us ensure and kind of reinforce our position as the number one state to do business. … I can’t wait to see what comes out of this, and I can’t wait to see all the companies that get to benefit from it.”

Plattenburg said Curiosity Lab has received significant interest from universities, Fortune 500 companies and startups from around the country who want to test emerging IoT technologies for smart cities, connected vehicles and other mobility concepts. “They are excited to discover that they can use the track and innovation space at Prototype Prime for as little as a few days or as long as a year — whatever it takes to move their technology from concept to market,” she said.

Coding schools, for adults and kids

One of the startups’ biggest needs is software engineers, according to Plattenburg. “Almost every tech startup needs to hire people who can code, and good talent is hard to find,” she said.

Web development employment is projected to grow by 15 percent between 2016 and 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Peachtree Corners is already planting the seeds to help fill some of those positions.

“In creating the innovation hub plan, the city realized that helping citizens train or retrain to fill open positions would be valuable for everyone and made a focused effort to provide local coding education,” Plattenburg said.

The Professional Education division of Georgia Tech was signed on to conduct a “Coding Boot Camp” for adults at Prototype Prime. Its first round of classes, which started in January, sold out. About 40 students take classes two nights a week and on Saturdays for 24 weeks.

They will team up to work in a simulated professional work environment, building complex projects and applications to bolster their portfolios. They’ll also have access to career services such as resume and social media support, technical interview prep and portfolio reviews. The program, with a price tag of $10,000, is designed for people who are currently working or want to change careers.

Prototype Prime will also host a STEM-related summer camp for kids that starts on June 10. Roswell-based Kids 4 Coding will offer coding classes and other technology-related activities for kids ages 7-16 at the incubator.

Other kids will be reached through the incubator’s just-announced partnership with Paul Duke STEM High School, a new school that opened in Norcross last fall. Mentoring and other opportunities will be provided “so students can see what’s next for the future generation of technology,” Plattenburg said.

Left to right, Council-member Weare Gratwick, Mayor Mike Mason, City councilmembers
Phil Sadd and Alex Wright meet at City Hall during a January press conference where Sprint and the City announced their partnership on an intelligent vehicle test track which will feature Sprint’s 5G technology.
Photos by JASON GETZ/Getz Images

Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners

The city expects Curiosity Lab to take about four months to build. The track will run along Technology Parkway, from Peachtree Parkway to Spalding Drive.

Plans are underway for entrances to the site. “Later in the year, look for brightly painted lanes, digital signage and other visual cues that you are entering an innovation environment that will help to discover and define technologies of tomorrow,” Plattenburg said.

The test track is unique in that the city owns 100 percent of the roadway and right of way, she said. “What the city is creating out here on Technology Parkway is the opportunity for companies large and small to test things of the future and see how they will interact with people and with other vehicles, with traffic lights, with street lights, with everything that you would find in a city,” Plattenburg said.

Curiosity Lab will offer subject matter experts on site and will provide access to the 5G network to Prototype Prime startups. Existing companies in Tech Park will also be able to take advantage of 5G, getting it significantly ahead of the rest of the metro Atlanta, she said.

“We’re looking forward to Sprint helping our startups figure out how to utilize 5G,” Plattenburg said at the Curiosity Lab press conference, which was attended by Sprint IoT sales representative Steven Payne. Payne said Sprint is excited to partner with the city on Curiosity Lab.

“We’re looking forward to, over the next couple of years, not only the technologies that are born out of this park,” Payne said, “but just the innovations and the recognition and economic development it will bring to Peachtree Corners.” ■

Donna Williams Lewis is a freelance journalist who covered metro Atlanta for decades as a writer and editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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Consultant Al Simon Explains How Peachtree Corners Businesses Can Leverage AI

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Al Simon has a message for businesses: if you’re not using AI, you’re as far behind technology as using candlelight instead of electricity.
Sales consultant Al Simon // Photos by Tracey Rice

Al Simon has a simple message for business owners: if you’re not using AI, you’re about as far behind technology as if you’re using candlelight instead of electricity.

This was the core message of his talk at the January Peachtree Corners Business Association’s After-Hours Speaker Series. As a consultant for sales management with Sandler by Neuberger, Simon focuses on small to medium businesses with sales teams of 35 members or less and revenues up to $200 million.

He works with management teams and trains salespeople to improve sales revenue, gross profit margins, and other business metrics.

“Overall, it helps people thrive in their sales and sales management roles,” he said.

His topic, artificial intelligence for selling, involves teaching managers how to use AI to gather and interpret data. A simple Google search uses artificial intelligence, he said, but he also teaches salespeople how to use that information to improve their skills and processes.

Boosting sales enablement

Simon explained that AI could be used for pre-call planning. It’s not difficult to prompt a generative AI program to give you what you need.

A sample query for ChatGPT could be: “I’m a sales rep in the plastics manufacturing industry, and my prospect is an injection molding manufacturer. What are the three best questions I can ask their plant manager?

He emphasized that when prompting the AI, it’s vital to include the role you’re playing, the role of the people you’ll be meeting with and the challenge at hand.

“A prompt that has those components in it will be very effective in terms of coming back with three specific questions to ask,” he said. “It’s pretty cool.”

The biggest advantage of using AI is saving time, he said.

Even though the pre-call planning questioning strategies are important for sales reps, they should also gather information that they can use based on the prospect organization itself.

“I did one for a client of mine, a nonprofit, and … I asked the prompter how this organization can get revenue?” Simon said. “I got a great response —five or six bullet points on exactly how they get the revenue stream.”

He explained that the information is available in other ways, but by using AI, you can save the time it would take to weed through hundreds of pages of documents and reference materials.

“It’s a great way to quickly and efficiently and in a usable way get pretty complex information,” he said. “Back in the day, I hated searching through all those public documents trying to find information.”

Sales management uses for AI

On the sales management or even executive leadership side, Simon said there are many tools that gather metrics and interpret data. He mentioned a platform called Gong that uncovers what’s happening in customer conversations so revenue teams can do more of what’s working and set themselves apart from the competition.

“It analyzes a sales call by looking at how many questions you asked, how much talking you did and how much talking the client did,” said Simon. “You then start to build a database of your sales calls. You’ll be able to see trends.”

The manager can then help the employee ask enough questions or ask the right questions that are important to the sales call.

“Those kinds of things come out of a tool like that,” he said.

He also recommends utilizing a platform that measures close rates for salespeople.

“How often you win deals when you’re not talking to the main decision maker is important data,” he said. “If you’ve got someone who is consistently not calling high enough, so they’re always presenting proposals to a recommender who then has to take the proposal to their boss, it will decrease your close rate.”

Management can review the data and give the salesperson tips on connecting with people higher in the company.

At the end of the day, Simon said those who embrace AI technology will have a leg up on the competition because they are saving time and making better use of resources.

“The whole reason for these management tools is to coach the reps to be more effective,” said Simon.

One of the most valuable investments a business has is in its people, and making them better – even incrementally – can have a significant impact on business, he added. Even if the business is so small that the owner is the primary salesperson, there’s a lot to learn from AI.

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Deflecting debilitating blows one Guardian Cap at a time

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A Guardian Cap in use courtesy of Guardian Sports

With football season in the rearview for most players, the effects of injuries–especially those blows to the head–can alter careers and live well after the final play.

A relatively new piece of equipment manufactured in Peachtree Corners helps alleviate much of the impact from those hits that a helmet alone can’t deflect.

Husband and wife team Lee and Erin Hanson started Guardian Sports in 2011 with one goal: innovating equipment to better serve athletes. But one must go back even further to understand the science behind their technology.

“[Our initial company] really had nothing to do with sports,” said Erin.

She and her husband started the Hanson Group, a material science company, about 30 years ago.

“The Hanson Group solves problems for other companies–material science problems,” she said.

“Lee is a chemical engineer from Georgia Tech. … [He created] things for the military and all kinds of applications for all kinds of Fortune 500 companies. If they need something done quickly, they come to the Hanson Group and we try to solve their material science problems,” she explained.

By chance, someone from the helmet industry came to them looking to make a more flexible helmet.

“We saw the data behind what it could do to flex the exterior of a helmet,” she said. “And even though that company didn’t make it, we decided that if we could retrofit any football helmet inexpensively, we could cut down on the impact that all players were feeling.”

Making football fun and safe for all

When the idea for Guardian Caps came together, the Hansons weren’t considering adding another division to the company.

The drive to make the helmet accessory grew from the passion to help the game.

“Quite honestly, Lee and I were pretty far along in our lives. We had raised five children, and he had been at the Hanson Group for at least 20 years by then,” said Erin.

The couple questioned whether they wanted to launch something new and revolutionary. There was nothing like it on the market.

“We felt like if we’re going to go direct to consumer, we’re going to branch off to a whole new company and just go for it and see if we can make a difference,” said Erin.

Through trial and error, Lee and his team analyzed data that showed what a softer helmet exterior could do to reduce impact, which would translate into reducing injury rates.

“And how can we do it in a way that’s affordable and could be available for mass adoption?” Lee said during an interview with the city of Peachtree Corners.

“How can I make it affordable to that mom who’s already buying all that equipment for her child to play youth football? How can we create a one-size-fits-all?” he recalled.

He said they worked with a cut-and-sew facility and seamstress and made up the first prototypes before testing them in a laboratory.

Their son and his teammates at Wesleyan became the first to practice with the new equipment.

In 2012, The University of South Carolina and Clemson were the first college adopters, and the company experienced solid grassroots growth after that.

Joining the Peachtree Corners business community

By 2014, the Hansons moved their company to Peachtree Corners to benefit from the pro-business, family-friendly community and strong Georgia Tech connections.

The Guardian Cap is now used by over 300,000 youth high school and college athletes nationwide and mandated by the NFL for all 32 teams.

The cap dramatically reduces the force of impact upon collision, as experienced by football and lacrosse players. This topic has come to national attention due to CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and its relation to concussions.

According to company literature, in 2017, Guardian won the first NFL HeadHealth TECH challenge to “develop new and improved helmet and protective equipment.”

While the football helmet itself has undergone many changes since the early days of the small leather hats that only covered the tops of the head and the ears (no face mask and nothing to absorb blows from tackles and other hits), Guardian Caps are an accessory that builds upon modern technology.

Some college and professional players wear helmets made so that the interior conforms to their heads. Guardian Caps adds a layer of protection on the outside, absorbing shock before the impact even reaches the helmet.

“Now, obviously, safety is a concern amongst athletes. So, Guardian Cap has come up with this soft-shell layer that goes on top of the hard shell of the helmet,” said Lee.

In 2018, testing done by NFL and NFLPA-appointed engineers revealed that Guardian Caps made a statistically significant improvement over hard-shell helmets alone, company literature said.

By August 2020, the NFL allowed its teams to wear Guardian Caps during practice. The Jacksonville Jaguars were the first to do so. In July 2022, Guardian Caps were featured at NFL training camps for all 32 teams.

This year, the NFL mandated that Guardian Caps be used for the 2023 season in all pre-season, regular season, and post-season practices. Players in position groups with the most head contact will be required to wear Guardian Caps in addition to running backs and fullbacks, as well as linemen and linebackers.

No one-hit-wonder

Genius doesn’t take a timeout, and Guardian Sports isn’t resting on the Caps’ success alone.

“We’re constantly evolving, and although Guardian Caps is our flagship product, we’ve got others,” said Erin.

Their son Jake was a lacrosse goalie at Georgia Tech, dodging rock-hard projectiles flying at him at 93 miles an hour.

“So, we said, ‘You know, why don’t we make lacrosse balls out of rubber?’” Erin said.

Thus, Lee created a urethane ball. Called the “Pearl,” it is now the official ball of the NCAA lacrosse tournament.

The Hansons have also developed infill for artificial turf fields that isn’t made of used car tires.

Without the chemicals and carcinogens of rubber tires, the smoother pellets are puffed with air, cause fewer abrasions and lower the temperature of the field by as much as 30 degrees.

“As we see things, it’s really difficult not to want to solve things when you see our children being affected by it,” said Erin.

Investors initially wanted to sell Guardian Caps at $1,000 each, but the Hansons knew that families couldn’t afford that price tag for youth sports. At the end of the day, they are a dad and a mom who are looking out for the safety of kids.

“The NFL is really cool, and they’ve helped us with exposure, but, you know, we’ve got a real passion for helping those young developing players, for sure,” she said.

Guardian Sports
3044 Adriatic Ct NW
Peachtree Corners, GA 30071
guardiansports.com
770-667-6004

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Axon Accelerates Real-Time Operations Solution with Strategic Acquisition of Fusus

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Real-time crime center

Axon, a leader in connected public safety technologies, announced it has acquired Fusus, a pioneer in real-time crime center (RTCC) technology.

This news builds upon a successful strategic partnership launched in May 2022, marking a decisive leap forward in Axon’s mission to Protect Life.

This acquisition also further catalyzes Axon’s growing presence in retail, healthcare, private security and the federal space.

Fusus excels in aggregating live video, data and sensor feeds from virtually any source, enhancing situational awareness and investigative capabilities for public safety, education and commercial customers.

This acquisition provides Axon with technology not currently in its existing network, and facilitates seamless connections to critical data sources such as camera locations and video feeds from both fixed and body worn cameras during incidents.

Fusus’ technology propels Axon’s real-time operations product roadmap, addressing critical challenges faced in public safety.

It empowers law enforcement professionals with location mapping, escalation alerts, livestreaming, real-time and post-incident visibility, allowing swift decision-making, and responsive actions.

“Throughout our long-standing partnership and investment with Fusus, we’ve witnessed the impact of collaboration in achieving remarkable results for law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve,” said Ran Mokady, Axon’s Senior Vice President of Real-Time Operations.

“This acquisition is a significant milestone in our mission to protect life as it further enables law enforcement and emergency teams to better deter and respond to escalating situations,” he added.

“Our collaboration with Axon has helped Fusus raise the bar on how first responders can affect positive outcomes through open and interoperable systems,” said Chris Lindenau, CEO of Fusus.

“As one team with a shared purpose to protect life, we are poised to rapidly expand this vision into the way law enforcement agencies, governments, businesses and schools work together in support of community safety,” he explained.

Real-time crime centers provide public safety with a centralized facility equipped with advanced technology and data analysis tools that enable law enforcement agencies to monitor and respond to incidents in real time.

These centers can integrate various data sources, such as cameras, sensors, social media feeds and other information systems, to provide a comprehensive and immediate view of ongoing criminal activities or emergencies.

Ultimately, by aggregating all of this information into a single pane of glass for public safety, real-time crime centers enhance situational awareness, improve response times and support proactive crime prevention efforts by leveraging up-to-the-minute information and analytics.

To learn more about how real-time crime centers can increase safety in any environment, see Axon’s latest blog post.

“Real-time crime centers serve as indispensable assets for agencies, offering unparalleled insight and actionable intelligence in one open and unified platform,” said Marshall Freeman, Deputy Chief Administrative Officer for the Atlanta Police Department.

Just like Axon, Fusus and its products are built from the ground up with an explicit focus on ethical and equitable design.

As a joint organization and in partnership with Axon’s Ethics and Equity Advisory Council (EEAC), they will continue their relentless commitment to build solutions that make the right things easier and the wrong things harder, every day.

The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Axon was advised by Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP and Fusus was advised by Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in connection with the transaction.

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