Terminus Technologies is creating a next-generation smart city
The UK-based company is in Chattanooga for the Sustainable Mobility Accelerator.
Terminus Technologies, an urban data mining company from the United Kingdom (UK), debuted in Chattanooga, marking one phase of its venture into the United States. The company is involved in several ongoing projects within the U.S.
Co-founders Alexander Johnson, Joshua Ward, and Matous Kundrik publically announced their intentions to establish the company’s technology and headquarters in the U.S. during the inaugural Sustainable Mobility Summit, organized by The Company Lab (CO.LAB) and gener8tor.
“We are creating a next-generation intelligent traffic systems product that harnesses three spectrums of data: optical, infra-red, and LiDAR (spatial). This data provides us with a wide range of insights including traffic patterns, vehicle types, speeds, and environmental impact,” Johnson said.
For example, the data collected by Terminus Technologies could enable city planners to identify a certain percent of cars turning left at a particular intersection. This insight could prompt adjustments to traffic light timings, potentially mitigating congestion and accidents.
In the UK, Intelligent Traffic Systems (ITS) are more common on busy intersections and roadways. However, the ITS industry is just starting to amp up in the United States. Right now, these ITS projects are primarily confined to ‘smart corridors,’ with Chattanooga’s MLK Smart Corridor serving as a notable local example.
“The ITS market is highly developed and mature in the UK. In Europe, we represent the next generation of these systems; whereas, in the United States, we represent a new technology altogether.” Kundrik said.
Additionally, in the U.S. the government can do business at the speed of business, which is a great environment for a startup that depends on accessing data from public roads. Kundrik emphasized the expedited pace of governmental processes in the U.S. compared to the UK, which has spurred their decision to relocate the company’s primary operations and headquarters to the U.S. in 2024.
Currently, Johnson is the only Co-Founder in the U.S. He lives in Indianapolis, while Ward and Kundrik remain based in the UK.
“Hopefully, Josh and Matt will join me on this side of the pond soon,” Johnson said. “It’s exciting to bring technology that is market-leading and world-leading to the United States.”
The Genesis of Terminus Technologies
“How does one stumble into urban data mining? That’s the million-dollar question,” Ward said.
The genesis of Terminus Technologies traces back to a shared passion for motorsports. During the pandemic, Ward collaborated with Kundrik on developing a camera technology to gather deeper insights into race cars. Together, they devised a powerful sensing solution capable of tracking a broad range of metrics about vehicles, even at high speeds.
Johnson joined the team to help spearhead commercialization in the U.S.
“We realized that if we could track a car at 200 miles per hour, we could certainly track it at 30 miles per hour,” Ward said.
This realization spurred the pivot of Terminus Technologies towards broader applications.
“Being willing to pivot and adapt to change is integral to startup culture, and that’s exactly what happened here,” Johnson said.
Participating in the Sustainable Mobility Accelerator
A data mining company’s output is only as good as its data – the more data you feed the artificial intelligence, the better the outcome.
Up to this point, the Terminus technologies team said they have relied heavily on synthetic data to simulate real-world outcomes. They have virtual sensors set up in a virtual world (not dissimilar to a video game) and they run different scenarios to create data for their machine learning.
“For the past few months, we’ve been slowly feeding it more real-world data. We have been getting excellent results,” Kundrik said.
The company has gathered data and tested its technology in several locations around the world, including the U.K., Italy, and parts of Eastern Euope. They hope being in the Sustainable Mobility Accelerator will open doors for them to install new sensors.
Additionally, the team said they are looking for partners and potential early adopters of their technology.
To find more information about the Sustainable Mobility Accelerator, read this article.
