 Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are at the Western Digital Offices in Milpitas at a really interesting event. It's the Innovation in Motion Mapping and Navigation event about 200 people is put on by the Autotech Council whose charge is really to help automotive manufacturers, first tier suppliers, second tier suppliers get a connection into Silicon Valley and part of what's going on on the technology side. So we're excited to have our next guest here. It's Arnold Mayer. He's Strategic Marketing Manager for TumTum Maps. Arnold, welcome. Yeah, thanks. Nice to be here. Absolutely. So you were on a panel, some really interesting discussion earlier today, but I think a lot of people probably know TumTum from back and you guys were one of the first, right? Kind of self independent GPS units, but you guys have moved on way beyond that. So why don't you give us an update on what's going on at TumTum? Yeah, that's okay. So I think TumTum has been a pioneer in the space of navigation. We actually celebrated our 25th year just recently, but over those 25 years, we've seen a lot of pivots into different directions from simply starting into a space where we're building simple navigation software to building or launching one of the first consumer hardware devices. And then transposing the space into not only helping people guide you from A to B, finding the route, but also finding the fastest route. And by doing that, we acknowledged the fact that we need more information from vehicles. So that was one of the things where we were one of the first that started collecting data from vehicles. So using the community of drivers on the road to actually get our input on traffic jams, road changes, those kind of conditions into changing the space. And most recently, we're also adopting the change that's going on in the industry towards anonymous driving, where we're adapting our map data and our software products to support those kind of use cases. So it's really exciting. It's always changing. Yeah, it's funny because it's a pretty consistent theme. We do a lot of tech conferences and one of the things that comes up over and over and over is you want to use your proprietary data that you have exclusively, but then you want to use other data and open data and community contributed data and put that into your algorithms around with your proprietary data. And that's really how you have competitive advantage to use multiple inputs and multiple sources, not just the stuff that you used to own. That's a lot different than kind of how we used to think of data and how we used to just kind of do our own thing. And you've seen that revolution in the map space. Yeah, definitely. There's no one ground truth. I think a company that ties itself down and saying, well, there's only one type of sensor that we use or one type of data that then you restrict yourself too much. And that's definitely something we've seen changing. Actually, one of the reasons why we're successful in this space is because we bring a lot of different companies together. So the information we collect from vehicles to understand how people are actually using the road are not limited to one OEM or one tier one supply or one technology. And what enables you to do or what enables us to do is actually share between these kind of parties and have everyone benefit from that. It's because that was another one of the debates earlier in the session was what's more important? The map that's kind of pre-populated and it's kind of the baseline for what's happening around the autonomous vehicle and where it is versus the sensors, which are kind of collecting the data in real time as to what is actually happened. I don't think there was a consensus. No one wanted to raise their hand and pick one side up. But as you say, it's really all the above, right? You want to have the baseline data, but really to open up and take all this other data from these variety of sensors, including people, is what increases the richness and then sharing it back. Again, it's a very different way of thinking about the world where everything used to be just kind of closed and locked or proprietary. Yeah, yeah, I think so. And it's a kind of a unfair question almost to say, right? What's more important than map or the sensors because they need to work really close together. And it will also force like multiple companies to work closely together because the map is an additional reference to the sensor in a sense that it helps the sensors to get better insights on the things that they're scoping, but also the other way around the sensors are in addition to the map-making companies to help them gather the input that they need to update those reference layers and to keep them accurate. Right, the other thing that came up earlier is the massive amount of investment and value that's still being created in maps, which most people think, ah, really? I think Google Maps or my Siri Maps, not that big a deal. But you brought up a really interesting thing in the panel which is that there is no map. There is no like single map, but really start to think of maps as an aggregation of layers of different types of information depending on the type of an application that you are using this for. So I thought that was a pretty interesting concept. It isn't just a map. It's really many, many layers of granularity, updated information, dynamic and static, depending on, again, the specific application that you're trying to execute. Very different way of thinking about the world. Yeah, that's the transition, right? Where maps have traditionally been something that's been used by humans to interpret it where you are or maybe by navigation systems to visually present you how you should adapt the route into something where machines are actually guiding the vehicles or helping you guide you along your way, which changes the way you think about a map. And I think it's also something that came back in the discussion where it was brought forward, where we're going from maps to more location information. So there's no, the whole visual element gets out of the discussion and it's more something that adds to those senses. So that's definitely changing. I'm curious to get your perception, like you say, Tom Tom's been at it for a while. As you start to integrate third-party data into your product and worrying about things like accuracy and veracity and you want everybody to contribute, but at the same time, if that's then being bundled up and then sold out to your customers, you need to run it through some type of a filter. So I wonder if you can share some experience of how you kind of make those trade-offs between bringing in more disparate crowdsource data and still providing high levels of accuracy because it came up time and time again, right? The map sends you down a road that's no longer there. It's not a good situation. So have you kind of balanced that and been able to add that extra data? Yeah, so it's always something that map makers, it's the traditional fight against, okay, how quickly do I want to get these kind of updates in the road network towards how reliable do they need to be? How sure do I want to be that it's actually the right kind of changes that we make? And we've always chosen an approach where we are opening ourselves up to use community information, but that we always want to check it off against multiple sources, which can come from sensors or community information to validate it so that if we see a change, it's not by a hunch. If we, for example, good examples, if we see or get a traffic report that there's a traffic jam, what we start doing is we start gathering information from other sources. Do we see that same kind of feedback coming from vehicles broadcasting that they're actually in a traffic jam in that specific location? Do we see in the road conditions that we have that that's a most probable location for a traffic jam and only by combining multiple sources? We say, okay, now we feel with a comfortable way that we can give that back. Amazing. So you've been in a space, Tom Tom's been in the space. As you look forward, right? Autonomous vehicles are coming really, really quickly. You know, you basically have infinite amount of compute, store, and networking that's gonna be made available to you. You've got 5G coming just around the corner. So, you know, the putty from which to work is almost infinite. What are some of your priorities for the next six months, 12 months, 18 months? What are you working on? Yeah, so that's a good question. So it's especially around increasing the amount of layers, increasing the amount of partners that we work with. So there's an abundance of sensors and we want to expand that, but also the scalability. So there's going to be a need for the mapping information to support tier ones and OEMs. But you can imagine the case that you have a very successful technology and if it only works with a map that's available in a really small region, it's not applicable. So something we're now doing massively is investing in expanding that map database that we have to more regions. Traditionally, we always have map information that allow you to navigation and planning, getting you from A to B, but also now expanding it with that HD map footprint to multiple regions is something that we see for the next six or 12 months that we want to expand upon. Exciting times. Yeah, exactly. All right, well it's a cool little conference and you know, I love these little conferences. They're super intimate. There's no X ball. Everybody is there and learning and sharing information and it's a real sense of camaraderie which you don't see at some of the larger shows. All right, well Arnold, thanks for taking a few minutes and again, good job on the panel earlier today. Well, thanks for being here. Oh, absolutely. All right, he's Arnold, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. It's the innovation in motion mapping and navigation event. Thanks for watching.