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AUTONOMOUS TRUCKS, DRONES, AIR TAXIS, AND OTHER NEW TECH WILL BE TESTED AT THE ALLIANCETEXAS MOBILITY INNOVATION ZONE IN NORTH TEXAS.
ATECH TESTING GROUND The AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone is about to spring to life testing autonomous trucks, drones, and other technologies stretching the limits of logistics and transportation. BY JIM FUQUAY
Sometime in the first few months of 2020, a shipping container will be lifted off its railcar and onto an adjacent tractor-trailer rig. Then, without a human driver intervening, the big rig will make its way to one of the many distribution facilities at the huge AllianceTexas development, and with that trip a new phase of logistics will begin in North Texas. “It’s another cycle of the Industrial Revolution, or the Technology Revolution,” says Mike Berry, president of Hillwood Development Co., which, like AllianceTexas, was founded and directed by the Perot family of Dallas. The logistics industry, which consists of moving and storing goods, is in the midst of “creating a whole new ecosystem, and we’re trying to play an active role in it.” The automated transport that Hillwood plans to demonstrate is just one of the elements of a perhaps not-so-futuristic proving ground for new technology that Hillwood announced in June 2019 when it unveiled plans for what it calls the AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone. Automated trucks and cars will require streets with embedded wireless
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communications, including new 5G technology that uses denser towers to speed response time between users and networks. Likewise, aviation drones will need the same rapid communications plus air traffic control. That will mean a technology network communications system, as well as a physical building—likely something that already exists—followed by a purpose-built “Innovation Center” in Alliance. He sees that structure housing labs and R&D operations, business incubators, and conference space. “It could be a real estate deal or more of a partnership complex. It’s just ideas on paper now,” Berry says. The 26,000-acre business park has all the qualities needed to serve as a center of research: miles and miles of controlled roadway, the world’s biggest industrial airport, more than 500 manufacturing and distributing buildings occupying close to 45 million square feet of space. And, Alliance also is home to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Southwest Air Traffic Control Center. Sort of the icing on the cake. There’s really no other place in the United States, or perhaps the world, that offers such a combination of assets to allow technological testing, says Terrance Pohlen of the University of North Texas in Denton, which has developed a sizable logistics department within the business school. While much of the timetable for showcasing driverless vehicles, drone transports, and computer-assisted traffic planning will depend on federal regulatory progress. “So many people are trying to push the envelope, the regulators are overwhelmed,” Pohlen says. It’s no coincidence that Hillwood formally announced its Mobility Innovation Zone at an Uber Elevate summit in San Francisco. The ride-sharing service,
WINTER 2020