September was filled with events celebrating Michigan’s mobility ecosystem. In mid-September, the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification and Centropolis hosted the Mobility Innovation Exchange ‘MIX’ Summit and Michigan Moves Demo Day. The MIX Summit is an annual convening of industry leaders, innovators, and policymakers advancing the future of transportation, with discussions spanning mobility on the ground, in the air, maritime, manufacturing, defense, and the emerging industry of Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). Michigan Moves Demo Day then offered a showcase of Michigan startups and growing companies with live drone and UGV demonstrations, ride-and-drives, and hands-on exhibits.

Chief Mobility Officer Justine Johnson kicked off these events, bringing the mobility ecosystem together for a day of learning, connections, collaboration, and essential conversations. Conversations featured the intersection between tech, innovation, and humanness, as well as scaling innovation with supply chain and manufacturing rigor and utilizing dual-use technology to serve both commercial and defense purposes. Across all of these conversations, talent is key. Our very own Michigan Mobility Fellow SaMiya Carroll moderated the session “Bridging Careers from Automotive to Advanced Mobility,” a reminder that programs like the Michigan Mobility Fellows Program through CEDAM, along with high school and college engineering and career preparation programs, are necessary to advance the future of mobility.

In late September, Ann Arbor SPARK presented the Ann Arbor Mobility Summit. Ann Arbor SPARK is a regional economic development organization that supports technology innovation in the Ann Arbor area, with the mobility sector being no exception.  I was particularly excited for the Mobility Summit since, as a fellow for Ann Arbor SPARK, one of my main responsibilities in the months leading up to the Summit had been event planning. Led by Janis Seabolt, director of Mobility Programs at Ann Arbor SPARK, the Mobility Summit featured topics spanning the mobility industry, including safety in autonomous vehicle deployment, space as an emerging area in need of infrastructure, the utilization of robotics and autonomous technology to do dangerous work, and more. The Summit even featured a live recording of the podcast “At the Wheel.”

The Michigan Mobility Fellows Program aims to strengthen Michigan’s transportation and mobility ecosystem by making the future of mobility more inclusive, accessible, and sustainable, and the Mobility Summit reflected those priorities by bringing industry leaders together to foster collaboration and drive innovation across the state.

There was one particular conversation that really stood out to me, both in our preparation sessions and during the panel I sat on during the Summit. It focused on the question of “What is Safe Enough?” as autonomous trucking and deployment become more of a reality. Hearing from experts at MDOT about how they define and implement safety, how companies like Torc and Retrospect are prioritizing safety in their work, and how legal experts at Varnum approach these issues reinforced one of the panel’s key takeaways: safety should not be treated as a final step before deployment. Safety should be considered a foundational priority throughout the development and implementation of evolving transportation technologies.

Overall, the Mobility Summit not only focused on what we think of as traditional mobility (automotive, cars, and trucking), but also pushed the possibilities of what we think is possible, because entrepreneurs, startups, and scaling businesses certainly are. It solidified that it takes more than great technological ideas to advance the mobility ecosystem; industry, research, talent, testing facilities, and public-sector support make Michigan more mobile in every sense of the word.

Throughout the month, the standout message focused on AI. With its growth and technological productivity, it was nice to hear the reminder that technology only works when it works in tandem with humans. In other words, tech innovation only becomes useful when it encounters life. The keynote address from Dushyant Wadivkar at the Mobility Summit echoed this: we cannot innovate for innovation’s sake; innovation must be human-centric.

My main takeaway from both events is that mobility innovation doesn’t happen in isolation; it happens because of connections and events like the Mobility Summit and MIX Summit. Seeing Ann Arbor SPARK clients, like Snowbotix and TreeTown Tech, at Demo Day, as well reminded me of that, along with conversations still occurring 30 minutes after programming had ended at the Mobility Summit. It’s clear the future of mobility is happening across all across Michigan, in many sectors, from innovation to supply chain, and the leaders, ideas, and innovations are shaping it. I plan to keep these conversations and lessons with me as I continue to build my career in equitable and accessible mobility and transportation initiatives for Michiganders.