New industry, same challenges
A few weeks ago, Alex Macris joined us as the Head of Engineering in the Heex Technologies spaceship. In this interview, we took on the opportunity to learn more about him and discuss technology, data, AI and how Smart Data could impact the future of technology.
Hello Alex!
Hello, my name is Alex. I am delighted to be part of the team and thank you for the warm welcome! A little bit about my background… Before joining Heex Technologies, I worked the last 30 years in tech around startups and more intensively in the video game industry. I really like to work in fields with strong technical challenges. And as surprising as it may seem, there are many similarities between the industries of video games and autonomy.
Why Heex Technologies?
I decided to join Heex Technologies because I have been seduced by the technical challenges of the solution. We are developing something extremely ambitious and I felt like the complexity had very few to no match.
One of the specificities that I love the most is our two-headed solution, with an embedded aspect coupled with a web platform. The technical issues and challenges are as important in the embedded as in the cloud. Working in the embedded world is rare in the startup field and it is similar to what I have seen in video games. Languages and technologies are the same and you have to take advantage and optimize the limited available hardware, so I can really put my experience at the service of the development of our solution at Heex Technologies.
You’re in one of the most complex and challenging engineering areas with Autonomous Vehicles (AV).
AV represent one of the most complex technical and technological challenges of the last decades. This unprecedented complexity is attracting the best engineers and researchers from around the world to enable the advent and the deployment of the autonomous mobility. The promise of the self-driving car is an amazing opportunity to change the way we live and travel. To reach autonomous maturity, it will be necessary to master simultaneously a set of technologies such as the cloud, the embedded systems, AI, with the backbone aggregating all of them: data management. And that is why it is so exciting to be here in the space!
Data is one of the cornerstones of the future of technology, especially in mobility. As an engineer, what’s your point of view on the role of data management?
First of all, it is important to understand the change of perspective around data over the last five years. Yesterday, everyone wanted to get as much data as possible, but after years of collection, we reached a point where we can’t deal with the volumes we’re collecting anymore. The new challenge is not to have more data, but to find the right one. This new step can be likened to the origins of the internet. In both cases, the difficulty is to find what you are looking for. In fact, all the data is there, but without knowing how to search, it is impossible to find what we want. This simple fact brings us to start thinking to retro engineer solutions. To find things, data have to be organized and processed, and it is extremely expensive today. To reduce costs, we need to automate as many things as we can. From this point on, we become aware that all the data cannot be treated with the same level of importance. It is therefore essential to identify what will be of most interest. The qualification of the data is what will allow us to have an efficient search. Hence, our strategy is to make that selection as soon as possible and extract it at the point where it costs the least, which is at the moment it is being produced (e.g. , at the edge from the vehicle).
I’m super excited to have joined the ambitious team of Heex Technologies as the Head of engineering. I’m looking forward to contribute to their strong technical expertise and to make autonomy a reality thanks to the Smart Data management technology.
Thank you Alex and happy to count you among us!
