Summit In Downtown Miami Focuses On Future Of Automated Vehicles

MIAMI (CBSMiami) - The Florida Automated Vehicles Summit is taking place this week in downtown Miami.

It's a place for industry leaders and experts to come together along with the accompanying technologies to work towards implementing autonomous vehicles.

"This is another example of Florida leading the way and embracing some of these emerging technologies," said Governor Ron Desantis.

The governor addressed the crowd and helped kick off the conference on Thursday morning.

Luminar develops vision systems and had its technology on display and even demonstrated along Biscayne Boulevard.

"It's always looking for objects it could hit or could hit it," said Scot Feris the Chief Business Officer for the company.

The display used Lidar, or light and radar, to track objects around the car in all directions all the time.

"Being able to plan maneuvers keeping passengers safe as well as pedestrians and objects around the car safe," said Feris.

In addition to safety, he explained that the automated vehicles, when implemented, would be able to use the existing infrastructure more efficiently while keeping everyone safer.

One company that has implemented its vehicle is Beep. They had a small shuttle available for demonstrations at the summit. The same one that has been operational in a community near Orlando and has already transported close to 5,000 people.

"It's been good but the one complaint is the speed," said Mark Reid the co-founder of Beep.

Reid added that as the technology develops not only will the speed increase, but also the scope of automated vehicles.

Technology that is being discussed and developed at the summit in Downtown Miami this week. This is the 7th Annual Florida Automated Vehicles Summit and it takes place through November 22nd.