KTM Digital Challenge: Interview with Motion-S
We’re now nearly four weeks into the KTM Digital Challenge — an exciting and unique opportunity for companies and developers to build applications and services for connected KTM motorcycles. If you’re thinking about taking part but lacking inspiration then check out this in-depth interview with Motion-S: a mobility data analytics company providing advanced services for the processing of device agnostic mobility data.
In this interview you’ll learn what the biggest hurdles and highlights of the challenge have been for Motion-S so far, as well as their team’s advice for others thinking of entering the KTM Digital Challenge. They also give us the lowdown on their app for the challenge that provides detailed risk assessment to riders.
What initially prompted your team to take part in the challenge?
During one of the previous challenges co-created by HIGH MOBILITY we had a very positive experience of interacting with the HIGH MOBILITY platform, in particular the emulation of the signals that we use as part of our business. At the time of that competition we did not have the right people available to create a team. However, this time, when the KTM Digital Challenge was announced we had the team in place to build the application we had in mind. We were already in discussions with KTM on the topics of digital and connected services, based on our data augmentation and mobility profiling platform. We therefore concluded that the KTM Digital Challenge was a good opportunity to showcase our ideas in a context where we see specific business opportunities.
What is your company working on outside of the challenge?
Motion-S was founded in 2014 and since then has been active in the domain of mobility data processing, with a particular focus on the main components of the Total Cost of Mobility (TCM), including insurance, maintenance and energy. In the domain of digital insurance, we work on objective risk-assessment methodologies that infer the exposure to risk of drivers to serious and fatal accidents. To do that we make use of mobility data contextualization, gathering a vast number of contextual parameters for every single trip, including road topology, traffic conditions, and weather among other features. Using these features we are able to infer the risk factors each driver is exposed to at every trip. A risk score is calculated by inferring how the driver is exposed to fatal, serious and slight accidents.
Tell us about the application idea that you are developing for the challenge.
During the challenge, we would like to take the opportunity to showcase our risk assessment platform by making use of the API to get trips, process them and provide a certain number of web visualizations to explain our risk assessment methodology. The challenge includes trips in three different contexts: motorways, hills and urban scenarios. We would like to show how risk factors in these different contexts are detected and how they affect the rider’s overall score.
What do you see as the biggest value of the challenge for your team and idea?
As we are already in contact with KTM, we see the challenge as an opportunity to present our solution in a very complete way, going beyond a conceptual study and providing insights from specific contexts in a completely automated manner, using HIGH MOBILITY’s resources.
Do you have any previous experience of working with motorcycle or other connected vehicle APIs?
Yes, we have integrated Car-Data APIs from OEMs, black-box provider’s APIs and communication protocols of OBD-II dongles from different manufacturers.
What have been the most enjoyable aspects and the biggest challenges of taking part so far?
We enjoy working with a well-documented API with a high number of data elements available. The biggest challenge for us is finding a way to have trip location data at the sampling rate required for running our risk assessment methodology.
If you could give one piece of advice for other teams or developers taking part what would it be?
Explore the API and the type and granularity of data you can get. Try to be as innovative as possible! Aim to find the best match for your product and service so as to maximise the chances of converting your idea into a business venture after the challenge.
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We hope you’ve enjoyed this interview with Motion-S. If you’d like to take part in the KTM Digital Challenge then head over to the site now and sign up: we can’t wait to see your innovative ideas for connected KTM motorcycles!