Bringing Data Sharing for Autonomous Vehicles and Insurance via MOBI

Bruce Pon
Ocean Protocol
Published in
4 min readOct 16, 2018

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Announcing Chris Ballinger as Advisor to Ocean Protocol

While working at the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), Chris Ballinger was advocating for data sharing between automakers, ride-sharing apps, logistics companies and autonomous car start-ups so that a base level of reliability for autonomous cars could be reached. They called it the “Trillion Mile Challenge.”

Naturally, when Chris stumbled on a series of blogs from Trent about how AI and blockchain were natural allies, his interest was piqued. We connected and within 8 weeks, developed a prototype called AVDEX, the Autonomous Vehicle Data EXchange built on BigchainDB. The prototype was announced on-stage at Consensus 2017 in New York.

Source: Consensus 2017 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV_ACBqEl-k&feature=youtu.be&t=868

Shortly after, Chris led the charge to set-up a mobility initiative between the MIT Media Lab, Toyota Research Institute and a host of blockchain partners to tackle a broad range of mobility challenges. One year later, MOBI — the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative was announced, including BMW, Ford, GM, Renault and Toyota as founding members.

After 18 months of whirlwind activity, our collaboration with Chris continues strongly. He presented his vision for mobility and autonomous vehicles on-stage at the 9984 Summit in Berlin.

Source: 9984 Summit — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn-LcjsYgrs

As an advisor to Ocean Protocol, we look forward to Chris’ insight and guidance on how we can further the goals of MOBI by using Ocean Protocol as a secure, data exchange protocol for solving mobility challenges.

Last week, we announced our support of MOBI with a $1 million commitment towards the MOBI Grand Challenge, a DARPA-style initiative to further the research for autonomous vehicles. The MOBI Grand Challenge is an excellent forum to bring the public, government, industry and academia together, while unlocking data and services for problem solvers. Working together, accidents, congestion and environmental impact of mobility can be significantly reduced, while increasing the flow of goods and improving accessibility to everyone.

Chris + Ocean Project Lead Chalid at the MOBI Americas Gathering in Oct. 2018

Please join us in welcoming Chris Ballinger as an advisor to Ocean Protocol.

Two Minutes with Chris Ballinger

Why are you supporting Ocean Protocol?

The last 20 years has seen an enormous concentration of wealth and power in companies who collect and hoard data. These new data monopolies have been an important source of human progress and innovation, but also reduce opportunity and lower relative income for the data ‘have-nots’. Increasing opportunity and improving income distributions requires fixing the tragedy of the digital commons, a market failure associated with data and digital content. Blockchain enabled data marketplaces are our best hope for a fix. Ocean Protocol is committed to creating functioning data markets, unlocking data, and creating a fairer data economy.

What capabilities will you bring as an Advisor?

A window into the emerging mobility services / IoT ecosystem and an interest in reading anything Trent writes.

What are the causes that you believe in?

Improving transportation. Worldwide, drivers spend an average of over 40 hours per year in traffic congestion; in cities like Los Angeles, drivers can waste over 100 hours in congestion. From an environmental perspective, transport consumes 25% of energy produced and 50% of oil globally and accounts for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions. More importantly, road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death among people between 15 and 29 years old and more than 1.25 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes. Better mobility will require massive, open datasets to ‘teach’ our increasingly autonomous and connected vehicles and mobility ecosystems to operate safely and efficiently.

How will you allocate your 100,000 Ocean tokens?

I want to accelerate the pace of innovation in autonomous cars, so I’m granting my 100,000 Ocean tokens towards the MOBI Grand Challenge.

Any other comments?

Data about how people and things move — the digital exhaust of the matternet — may be the most valuable asset created in the 21st century. I’m proud to support Ocean and their commitment to a more democratic data economy.

Biography

Chris Ballinger is Founder/CEO of MOBI and Chief Financial Officer for the Toyota Research Institute. Ballinger joined TRI in April 2017 following 14 years at Toyota Financial Services (TFS).

Upon his transition, Ballinger served in a global leadership role for TFS as Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Officer of Strategic Innovation, helping guide global TFS strategy to address future market trends and business model requirements. Ballinger’s achievements at TFS were recognized with a Pinnacle Award in 2012, given by the Association of Finance Professionals in recognition of excellence in Treasury and Finance, and he was named an Automotive News All-Star in 2013.

Prior to joining Toyota, Ballinger’s career stops included Providian Financial as Assistant Treasurer and Bank of America as Senior Vice President of Treasury. He was also Staff Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisors under President Reagan. Ballinger received a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Amherst College and a master’s degree in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

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