As the business plan for the next year was ready, if you can ever call a business plan ready, I couldn’t help the company with big picture stuff anymore. I decided to dig deeper in what Commsignia is engaged with.
I got the chance to get involved in a project where Commsignia deployed more than 50 of their Roadside Units in Las Vegas for CES. These units are connected to the traffic light controllers at intersections and transmit data to Commsignia’s onboard units. As you are driving on the streets of Las Vegas, now you are able to see in your car what the traffic light shows, when it is going to switch to green or how fast you have to go to catch the next green wave and many other things.
If only it were that simple. Deploying each roadside unit is a long process (now! later it will be shorter I bet), our partner in the US deploys the unit physically and connects it to the traffic light controller, Commsignia’s team gains remote access to it, configures it (many many things to set up), draws the map of the intersection and sets the timing values of each traffic light, develop further features if needed, debug certain things and so on. I took part in each of these tasks, and each of them required a different mindset, a different kind of me. A particularly fascinating experience for me was working on a new feature of an app.
SW development and debugging – sometimes even late at night
As a result of the long work, even from Commsignia’s office in Budapest I can see whether I can cross the road in Las Vegas for instance at the corner of Las Vegas Blvd and Flamingo Rd. right now. Even if this seems pretty simple, this is a huge innovation, and it will be presented at CES amongst AI-powered robots, self-flying drones, even NASA will be present and talk about their use of AR and VR.
Commsignia’s app shows the curent state of traffic signals
Another thing that we are extremely proud of that Commsignia has contributed to the fact that the very first autonomous bus on a public street in America is now accepting regular passengers. This is the first step in the future of transportation and we are happy to be part of it.
To achieve these great things the company is still growing, new people are hired. That’s why there were many ice-breaking games at the annual Christmas party where we got to know each other better, the founders even surprised us with little presents like their very own pálinka and other things.
The atmoshpere of the annual Christmas party
How will next year begin? The project in Las Vegas will soon be finished and that means that most likely another kind of challenge awaits and another kind of me is is being tried out, I can’t wait!
