Roger Berg is a Board Member of the AECC, and Chair of the Marketing Steering Committee. He is Vice President of DENSO’s North American Research and Development group.                                                

Describe what inspires you about the connected car industry.

For me, connectivity is more than telecommunications for vehicle drivers or operators.  It also means communicating data, and in some important cases, sensor data between vehicles, or even defining connectivity to include the use of radio frequency devices such as radars, visible and IR imaging cameras, and devices such as LIDARs.

Why this is inspirational is that this capability is being rapidly deployed at scale, and the supporting computing, communications and positioning technologies are all culminating in the “perfect storm” for an exciting mobility IoT world.

Tell us about your involvement with AECC.

DENSO has been involved with the AECC since its formation in 2018 as one of its charter members.  Personally, I became active in AECC starting at the beginning of 2020 after attending an all member meeting in Chandler, Arizona, as a DENSO representative.  Then I became AECC Marketing Steering Committee Chairman in August of 2020, and so now I’m much more active in promoting the AECC message across the industry.  This is a great crew and I’m really looking forward to industry-wide collaboration on this effort.

What have you learned from collaborating with the AECC?

Mobile edge computing, or automotive edge computing, is an important tenet to realize the necessary capabilities supporting most emerging Mobility IoT use cases currently under contemplation.  We as the automotive industry, however, need to agree that 5G or 6G mobile network operators aren’t likely to build out special networks to be used only for transportation, so liaison collaboration arrangements with other vertical market segments whose organizations are contemplating similar needs will be extremely valuable.

Can you share what you have enjoyed most about being an AECC member?

For me, it’s the willingness to hear a wide variety of ideas for use cases, technical architectures, and implementation scenarios from people with different business and technical backgrounds.  And the group members have a tremendous drive to look for solutions that are robust and capable of demonstrating feasible real-world implementation.  The enthusiasm in this group is quite empowering.

What is the benefit(s) of joining the AECC?

One of the biggest is that AECC has sincere concentration on determining implementable solutions using distributed storage and edge computing, in particular for the transportation industry.  If you’re looking for a broad perspective on all things 5G, then other consortiums like 3GPP or GSMA might be more suitable; for connected vehicles in general, then perhaps SAE (in the USA) or 5GAA.  But focusing on automotive edge computing, AECC is the best place to go.

In your experience, what is the benefit of joining the AECC – particularly for “non-car” companies and industries?

I think that there are huge opportunities in Mobility IoT and Connected Automated Vehicles for companies and industries not previously targeting transportation.  This might sound a little bit trite, but I truly believe the automotive industry’s future is at an inflection point where computing, sensing, data collection and analytics, and yes of course networking will drive the very nature of how we move people and goods more safely, with more efficiency and improved environmental sustainability in the years to come.  And how it’s done will look very different from what we see deployed today.