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Web conference notes, 2025.11.20 (MDS Working Group)

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Michael Schnuerle edited this page Nov 25, 2025 · 8 revisions

MDS Working Group

Agenda

MDS Modes - Delivery Robots

Delivery Details

Building on our last public working group meeting

Agenda

  1. Intro and announcements (10 min)
  2. MDS Delivery Overview (10 mins)
  3. Delivery Details (30 mins)
    1. Review Discussion area
    2. Review Pull Request of suggested changes
    3. Review Action Item updates from last meeting

WGSC Meeting Organizers

  • Host: Pierre Bouffort, Blue Systems
  • Facilitator: Michael Schnuerle, OMF
  • Preparation: Michael Schnuerle, OMF
  • Outreach: Michael Schnuerle, OMF
  • Note taker: Michael Schnuerle, OMF

Action Items and Decisions

  1. Review Pull Request of suggested changes and leave comments now
  2. Merge changes to the MDS 2.1 development branch by early December
  3. Boston to review proposal to see if it meets their needs now

Minutes

Notes

MDS Overview

  • New MDS Overview diagram to showcase modes and programs better (slide)

Delivery Recap

  • Boston kicked off the idea with a new ordinance which includes delivery vehicle data
  • Additional data opportunities, like illegal operations (will be covered as parts of unexpected incidents, a la DC DDOT) - not in ordinance, so not immediate need, bur valuable for others
  • Boston idea for stop type of 'restaurant' or 'commercial' to then provide lat/lon details, but may not solve for it anyway

Delivery Action Items Review

  • New view/naming/branding/icons of all the modes for MDS, as part of this work (slide)
  • INRIX question, are incidents being used yet? No will be in MDS 2.1 in Q1 2026, DC may use it before then. (meeting recap)
  • Review of the new shift, route, journey, trip, order combination examples added to spec using Mermaid code.

Diagrams

  • Journeys are flexible, can be adapted to tie trips together in a way that makes sense for the city program and vendors.
  • Overlapping orders can be tracked separately (optional) from first order, start of delivery, to stop at location, to hand off to customer, in an array
  • Route ID allows breakdown of journeys, not tied to a worker or shift
  • Similarities to SFMTA transit services. Many of these concepts could apply to transit. Route_id in Passenger?
  • Diagrams will be updated in other modes using Mermaid and better examples

Caps

  • MDS Policy does support caps on one operator for any defined geography
  • Not possible across all operators, specify for each provider
  • Would need a new MDS endpoint under Policy maybe, something like a /status or /information endpoint, that can broadcast collective information about the state of the city, like how many vehicles of which types are in which geographies. The city would get this data from each operators via MDS, then process and broadcast this out for everyone, and then could include total caps for an area that everyone would have to adjust to. A global cap would need an 'orchestrator' (ie, city). Example of max counts of robots in any crosswalk.

Location details

  • How to fuzz start and not the end, with connected trips overlapping.
  • Could use order pickup_address field as the start, stat area could be used on both sides of trip
  • Pickup in middle of journey, would get pickup address details, but not details of drop offs
  • Could add lat/lon order start fields?
  • Delivery companies concerned about how orders are grouped. Conflict between what operator wants vs what ordinance requires.
  • MDS Metrics is only for public agencies to use, after processing data retrieved from operators, and may not meet ordinance needs
  • Instead could use Policy Requirements to require or remove data as needed for your program
  • Just getting order restaurant address but not start/end details may work well here.
  • Massachusetts public records laws are strong, so how to keep the data secure, like data intermediary vendor.

Action Items from comments

  • Are Incidents enough to track "unsafe and illegal operations by delivery drivers - i.e. speeding, illegal turn, double-parking, etc." - may need more incident types, like CDS Enforcements and Violations
  • Clarify that shifts are made up of journeys, journeys made up of trips. Trips could have multiple orders, orders could have multiple packages.
    • Done, see commit
    • Shift_id allows chaining of journeys. Is this the right name (some term bigger than a journey for freight solution), or is there another additional field needed? Done, with same commit, added route_id.
  • Might need an array of package/orders details (delivery type, order_id, costs).
  • Digital policy - how does MDS Policy support density? Eg cap on number of vehicles in an area. New policy type needed?
    • MDS Policy already supports this with Rules and rule types. You can specify a max count of vehicles in any state (eg. on trip or stopped) for any defined geography.
  • Statistical areas - Change to array from string? Is there only one area per event?
    • Yes this was meant to be an array. Clarified with this commit.
  • If you want a statistical area for an end, but lat/lon for a start, how do you account for privacy? What change in spec could support this?
    • The only solution may be to not know the start location, and use statistical area instead. Ordinance issue? Use lat/lon but round to 2 decimal places (about 1.1km)?

Chat

  • 00:06:28 Yariel Diaz - Serve Robotics: Hi folks, Yariel Diaz with Serve Robotics
  • 00:06:32 Chay Mosqueda: Chay Mosqueda, Transportation Planner with the Wastach Front Regional Council in UT.
  • 00:06:36 Lauren Wilson: Reacted to "Hi folks, Yariel Dia…" with ❤️
  • 00:06:36 Jerad Weiner (San Francisco Public Works, CA, USA): Hello Everyone, Jerad Weiner, Asset Management Program Manager with San Francisco Public Works. San Francisco, California, USA.
  • 00:06:42 Rachel Castignoli (Austin): Reacted to "Hi folks, Yariel Dia..." with ❤️
  • 00:06:47 Rachel Castignoli (Austin): Rachel Castignoli - City of Austin - doing autonomous vehicle work!
  • 00:06:56 Jerad Weiner (San Francisco Public Works, CA, USA): Reacted to "Hi folks, Yariel Dia..." with ❤️
  • 00:07:02 Jerad Weiner (San Francisco Public Works, CA, USA): Reacted to "Chay Mosqueda, Trans..." with 👍
  • 00:07:05 Jerad Weiner (San Francisco Public Works, CA, USA): Reacted to "Rachel Castignoli - ..." with 👍
  • 00:07:14 Lauren Wilson: Lauren Wilson at Zoox! 👋
  • 00:07:15 Aylene McCallum (OMF): Hello everyone! My name is Aylene McCallum, Director of Partnerships & Development at the OMF. I can be your main point person for learning how to engage with the OMF, either as an existing member or prospective member! I always welcome emails from the community to learn how to get more involved: [email protected]
  • 00:07:25 Lauren Wilson: Reacted to "Rachel Castignoli - …" with 👋
  • 00:07:27 Aylene McCallum (OMF): Reacted to "Rachel Castignoli - ..." with 👋
  • 00:07:31 Jerad Weiner (San Francisco Public Works, CA, USA): Reacted to "Lauren Wilson at Zoo..." with 👍
  • 00:07:33 Jerad Weiner (San Francisco Public Works, CA, USA): Reacted to "Hello everyone! My ..." with 👍
  • 00:07:34 Aylene McCallum (OMF): Reacted to "Lauren Wilson at Zoo..." with 👋🏻
  • 00:07:42 Aylene McCallum (OMF): Reacted to "Chay Mosqueda, Trans..." with 👋🏻
  • 00:07:43 Alia Verloes (Blue Systems): Reacted to Hello everyone! My ... with "👍"
  • 00:07:45 Aylene McCallum (OMF): Reacted to "Hello Everyone, Jera..." with 👋🏻
  • 00:07:59 Lawrence Fan (CurbIQ - Arcadis): Hi everyone, Lawrence Fan with CurbIQ, an Arcadis product. First time at one of these meetings, but our product head Jacob Malleau was at Comotion and other meetings!
  • 00:08:07 Jerad Weiner (San Francisco Public Works, CA, USA): Reacted to "Hi everyone, Lawrenc..." with 👍
  • 00:08:15 Aylene McCallum (OMF): Reacted to "Hi everyone, Lawrenc..." with 👋🏻
  • 00:09:05 Bern Grush: Thank you for this work. My reason for participating is the issue of digital twin needed for cloud orchestration of robotic vehicle use of the curb. A company called Pudocity is deploying ISO DTS 25614 as an orchestrator. I think MDS/CDS should be used. A demonstration of this system is being prepared for a trial in the UK.
  • 00:09:38 Adrian Nunez (Zoox): Hi Everyone - Adrian Nuñez with Zoox!
  • 00:12:52 Jerad Weiner (San Francisco Public Works, CA, USA): Reacted to "Hi Everyone - Adrian..." with 👍
  • 00:13:00 Jerad Weiner (San Francisco Public Works, CA, USA): Reacted to "Thank you for this w..." with 👍
  • 00:13:33 Jaime Ventura: Hey all, Jaime Ventura here, from Portugal.
  • I’ve been working for the city of Porto until around 2020, where much into MDS.
  • Im trying to get back to the cities ecosystem, and so im looking forward to hear what’s new in MDS since then.
  • 00:14:57 Michael Schnuerle (OMF): Agenda https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-specification/wiki/Web-conference-notes,-2025.11.20-(MDS-Working-Group)
  • 00:15:09 Michael Schnuerle (OMF): Boston discussion https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-specification/issues/957
  • 00:15:13 Jerad Weiner (San Francisco Public Works, CA, USA): Reacted to "Hey all, Jaime Ventu..." with 👍
  • 00:15:44 Michael Schnuerle (OMF): MDS changes: https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-specification/pull/959
  • 00:16:37 Andrew Glass Hastings (OMF): Hi all - thanks for joining this discussion! If you haven’t already please change your name in Zoom to add your city/company/org next to your name so the community knows who’s on the call. You can change your name by scrolling over your picture and clicking the 3 dots then Rename. Thanks all!
  • 00:17:08 Jerad Weiner (San Francisco Public Works, CA, USA): Reacted to "Hi all - thanks for ..." with 👍
  • 00:17:49 Alex Demisch (SFMTA): Love the proposed new icons - a small but important touch!
  • 00:23:07 Bern Grush: What about robots on sidewalk and crosswalk that are not for delivery, such as security and other service robots in the same public, shared spaces?
  • 00:26:34 Jeff Lambart (Boston): This looks great from my perspective - I feel like that would give us a practical way to define and collect this information in the future if needed
  • 00:26:47 Sam Brenner: Reacted to "This looks great fro..." with ➕
  • 00:28:16 Michael Schnuerle (OMF): Incidents meeting : https://github.com/openmobilityfoundation/mobility-data-specification/wiki/Web-conference-notes,-2025.07.10-(MDS-Working-Group)
  • 00:42:00 Bern Grush: Can you tell us the name of the mermaid(?) tool once again? This is very useful.
  • 00:46:42 Bern Grush: that will not work without an orchestrator!
  • 00:47:28 Bern Grush: ISO 4448 constraints PMR caps as a multi-agent number!
  • 00:48:10 Bern Grush: individual caps are not workable!
  • 00:48:45 Michael Schnuerle (OMF): Mermaid https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/writing-on-github/working-with-advanced-formatting/creating-diagrams
  • 00:49:35 Bern Grush: Thanks. GANTT is what I needed!
  • 00:52:36 Bern Grush: Thank you, Michael. I need to leave early. Lets have a one-on-one in December.
  • 00:54:41 Sean Bouffiou, King County, WA: 2 decimal points is .69 miles.
  • 01:00:21 Michael Schwartz, INRIX: The orders approach would reveal grouping by businesses, but if the dropoff is fuzzed enough, then it still doesn’t reveal detailed order bundling

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