Deploying Mobility Innovations for Infrastructure Projects with Tim Slusser, Operations Director for motmot

Deploying Mobility Innovations for Infrastructure Projects with Tim Slusser, Operations Director for motmot The Mobility Table · Jun 16, 2026

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Concept

active, highly pressurized water infrastructure

It means the water system is working and pressurized while the robot is inside it. That makes the job harder because the robot has to operate safely in a tough, constantly “on” environment.

Term

potable water infrastructure

“Potable water” means drinking water. So “potable water infrastructure” is the underground pipe system that brings safe-to-drink water to homes and businesses.

Term

psi

“psi” is a way to measure pressure. Higher psi means the water is pushing harder inside the pipe, which makes the environment tougher for equipment to work in.

Term

tuberculation

Tuberculation is buildup inside water pipes—often rusty deposits that grow over time. It can make the pipe narrower and eventually cause flow problems.

Concept

making a 90 degree turn in six inch infrastructure

They’re saying the robot has to fit through very small pipes and still turn sharply. That’s difficult because there’s almost no space to maneuver.

Car

The Toyota Supra is a sports car made by Toyota. It’s designed to be fast and fun to drive, with a focus on performance rather than comfort. People may talk about it when discussing how a car is built to fit its parts and still drive well.

Term

sensors

Here, “sensors” means the robot’s tools for seeing and measuring what’s around it. Since the pipes are dark, it needs sensors to move and work safely.

Concept

AI and autonomy

They’re talking about using computer “smarts” so a robot can sense what’s around it and make its own movement decisions. The goal is to reduce how much a person has to control it directly, especially in tricky conditions.

Concept

full autonomy

“Full autonomy” means the robot can do the job by itself, without someone constantly steering or directing it. They’re saying today’s tools can help, but the long-term goal is complete self-driving behavior for the task.

Term

accelerometers

Accelerometers are sensors that detect how something is speeding up, slowing down, or changing direction. In this case, they help the robot notice when the water flow is pushing it around.

LIVE

Welcome to the Mobility Table podcast powered by Gem.

I am Bernard Swicky, VP of Mobility and Research at the Detroit Regional Partnership,

home of the Global Epicenter of Mobility or Gem. I'm joined by my co-host Janine.

Hey everyone, Janine Gantt, Mobility Engagement Officer for the Global Epicenter of Mobility,

and we are again happy to have this opportunity to bring to you all things that are cool and

interesting happening in Detroit's advanced mobility ecosystem. Today, I'm excited because

we're really going to be focusing in on innovations. Bernard, I'm curious,

what are some innovations that you've seen that you're pretty excited about?

I think right now, things that don't have a driver are really picking my interest, and we

tend to think of them very much as things that fly drones and the like, but we've got an interesting

technology we're going to be highlighting with Mott Mott, which is a human controlled but remotely

robot that goes under water well out of sight, and it's such an expansion of the definition of

mobility because we're moving neither people nor cargo, but we're solving problems. We're making

the world a better place, so we're still deploying this technology for the general good, but I love

how unconventional it is when we talk about mobility here at the mobility table. Well,

I agree, but you and I had a conversation last week, and you talked about driving a vehicle

from the back seat of a van using a remote control. Correct. I believe that was a company

called Lone Eagle, and yes, the way back, the third row of a minivan at the American Center

for Mobility, and I can tell you, I was there visually seeing what happens, but with this

remote in your hand, and by the way, Lord bless the good people in that van, who put their trust

in me, but just that challenge of, it was very difficult to do even when you're there and when

you're seeing it, but I can only imagine how difficult it is, any extra challenge of being

in a pipe underground, far away, in the dark. It's a very different environment,

and I love the fact that right now in Detroit, our core competencies line up with such things.

Absolutely, and I think our region has seen so many different types of new innovations and

technology, so I'm excited about what's happening in Detroit, and I imagine that as people move

around our region, they begin to see all kinds of different kind of technologies happening,

from things like Waymo to, I've seen recreational vehicles out there on the road as well, so

really interesting types of technology, and I do think that this one we're going to be talking

about with MOTMOT is something really different for people to begin to learn about and explore.

Yeah, absolutely, and it's also obviously a new company, so it's also a chance for the Detroit

region to kind of flex its muscle in terms of startup support, and helping the founders actually

build, capitalize, and launch, and it's another really cool, not new competency in Detroit,

or in the Detroit region, but it's one that's getting beefed up, strengthened up,

and it's getting exposure in the world right now. Absolutely, I think we have one of the best

ecosystems for startups in the country, if not globally, and one of the things we talked about

is really how do we ensure that not just the technology grows, but the business grows,

like how do we find businesses that are interested in building here, manufacturing here, creating

jobs here, staying here to really help grow our region, and I think this new technology

and our guest is going to help us really think through what's possible here. Yeah, absolutely,

and it's, you know, watch out Silicon Valley, right, because we've known we've got the capabilities,

right, the actual technology capability, but now it's also, you know, we talk about ecosystem,

and helping that fledgling company succeed with all the startup support that goes into

those early stages, we're now getting known for that, we're in that same conversation,

and I don't think that was necessarily true when we started Gem, so it's exciting to be here at

Mott Mott. Tim, thank you for joining us, and first of all, let's start off by learning a

little bit about you. What led you to working at Mott Mott? Well, thank you very much for having me,

this is super exciting to be here. So what led me to Mott Mott, I think I should start with

what Mott Mott is, like who we are as a company, because I think once I explain that you'll

understand like why this is so exciting to me. So Mott Mott is a robotics and software company

where we develop robotic platforms that enter into some of the harshest environments,

you know, on the planet right now. So we actually build technology that goes into

active, highly pressurized water infrastructure, this is potable water infrastructure, so when

you turn on the faucet, when you fill up your water bottle, we're in those, those pipes that

actually feed that network. And so in order to do that, two things, number one, highly, highly

pressurized, we're talking somewhere between typically like 50 to 80 psi of pressure, sometimes

even higher up to 100 psi. That's equivalent to depths around like 180 to 200 feet deep water,

right? So the environment is difficult that way. It's dark, there's no lighting, right?

In many cases, that infrastructure might be old, it might have what's called tuberculation,

which is almost like a plaque type of a buildup. That doesn't sound good at all. Well,

tuberculation, you don't want it in the water supply. Right, so but it's natural, it does happen.

You don't want it to get to the point where it starts to clog a pipe and create, you know,

issues in that way, kind of similar to your arteries in your body, right? So what we do is

we are able to access that infrastructure as small as six inches in diameter, which is a unique

challenge, right? Making a 90 degree turn in six inch infrastructure. Right, because when you talk

about your technology, we're talking, you know, not something sort of nefarious, it's a robot. Yep,

it's an actual physical little robot that goes in there and it's got adorable names like R2B,

D2. No. That is our internal name for our R2D2 robot. Yes. So, but yes, so we have to be able to

make these turns of stuff so you have this compact piece of technology that has to have lighting,

it has to have cameras, it has to have a variety of different sensors, and have the capability to

propel itself, right, into these environments. So these environments don't turn off. So it's a

really, really difficult challenge. We've got over 2 million miles of water infrastructure,

underground water infrastructure that's supporting these portable systems across the U.S. alone.

In many cases, this infrastructure is already past its useful life. In some cases, tens of years,

sometimes, you know, 50 plus years past its useful life. We have water infrastructure in the city of

Detroit, that is pre 1900. You know, I don't think a lot of folks think about that. Like,

and you know, we talked about this, you kind of see the infrastructure of bridges and utility

poles and so forth, but I don't think we really think about what's underground. Well, most people's

experience of water infrastructure is I go turn on the faucet, I wash my hands, I clean off, you know,

my fruits and vegetables at home before I cook. I turn off the faucet, I'm done, right. It's

something that we very much take for granted, but we're lucky enough to be able to do so.

But as this infrastructure continues to age, we're seeing more opportunities for

water main breaks across the country. By the resources that I've read, it's somewhere between

200,000 and 300,000 water main breaks on average per year. It's been pretty steady over the last 10

plus years in the U.S. And so what that means is that these entities that are operating this

infrastructure are constantly playing in a very kind of reactive mode. So what we're able to do

is go in and get data that can allow these entities to start shifting from being very reactive to

very proactive. When you're reactive, everything's more expensive, right? When the water main breaks

is, you know, you got to rush people down there, you're potentially paying overtime, you're expediting

supplies and equipment. Plus, you're disrupting the community and that's causing expenses and

other issues down the road as well. Yeah, so for example, my son was home from school the last

two days because they had plumbing and water issues at the school, right? They couldn't wash

their hands, they couldn't flush the toilets, they couldn't operate. So when water infrastructure

issues happen, everything stops, right? It's not like a road closure, okay, I can drive around it,

right? Oh, my power went out so I can go and I can, you know, work from the library or I can go

into the office or if the office powers out, I can work from home, right? Like, there's no flexibility,

right? Water's out, everything stops. So that's really what led me to Mott Mott in terms of like

the unique challenge, what I'm going to call a critical need in our nationwide infrastructure

that supplies water, the resource for life and what got me so excited to take this opportunity.

I've been in government for a little over 20 years, government and government adjacent roles.

Right, because you're coming most recently from the city of Detroit.

Correct. Mobility and innovation office, right? Yep, yep, so I was the chief of mobility

innovation for the city of Detroit for a little over four years under Mayor Duggan.

Fantastic experience, but it was funny when he hired me, he specifically told me, Tim,

the day you start acting and thinking like a government employee is the day I fire you.

It's a true story, right? And so I joke with people, I'm the most non-government government

employee there ever was. And so it's always been my dream to get back into the private sector to

really just build something, right? Do something that is of critical importance that helps to move

our society forward. And so I can't think of right now a better opportunity in place for me to be

then right here with Mott Mott trying to address this very unique challenge, you know, that is

something everybody should be paying attention to because it's your tax dollars

that are paying for this infrastructure, right? And if the infrastructure has to be replaced at

the most expensive method, i.e. we wait for it to break and then we dig it up and replace it

emergency, then it's going to mean more of your tax dollars have to go to it. If we can get in

front of that, we can collect the data, we can get into more of a proactive type of approach,

we can reduce those costs and we can spend those dollars more effectively and we can do more with

that money as well. Great point. So one thing I don't think we asked and just to kind of ground

this conversation a bit as well, but Mott Mott is from here. This is a Detroit region. Well,

I think Michigan State University technology. Talk a little bit about like its origin, how it came

to be. Yeah, so a few co-founders from Michigan State University that were going through their

MBA program, you know, had kind of identified this technology in one of the labs at MSU.

Talked to the individual who was leading those efforts and found a great fit. They pulled in

another co-founder from the University of Michigan that has depth of experience in industrial

operations and other things in that space. So we've got a really strong team focused on the

technology side of this. And again, what better place to really try and focus on water issues

than, you know, the state that literally, you know, has 20% of the world's natural water

resources on our borders, right? So they started this company just shy of two years ago, if my

timelines are correct. And they've done amazing work to get to this point. I'm a recent hire on

the team. Again, very, very lucky to be there. Very excited to be part of the team. But they started

this with, you know, a number of different, you know, small business grant opportunities,

number of different small resources that existed through like MSU and other programs. We've

leveraged opportunities from GEM itself. So we were very fortunate to be part of your mobility

talent resource network program. You know, you talked a little bit in your opening here about how

we can kind of, in this region, try to really provide those full wraparound support services

to help, you know, not just technologies develop, but businesses develop, right?

Yes. We talked about the business piece of it is really critical, especially as we think about

new innovations that can build and not just scale here, but build here, create jobs here,

create manufacturing opportunities here. So I'm glad you're talking about the business and the

things. Yeah. So again, your program, that mobility talent resource network really helped us. It set

us up with an HR consultant that helped us work through our employee handbook, our hiring policies,

a number of different things, you know, from an HR perspective that, you know, we as a team,

we just didn't have a real depth of strength then, to be honest with you, right? It was one of our

gaps if we're being honest with ourselves. And so the ability to leverage that program, you know,

through GEM was extremely helpful to us. And honestly, we actually just launched the fruits

of those efforts internally, right? So I just signed my employee handbook recognition this week,

right? So yes, timing wise, perfect. But yeah, no, it's, it's really, really exciting to be

building this type of stuff here in the Southeastern Michigan, you know, region, because, you know,

these these resources are now available to us, right? And they're helping us move faster,

helping us move smarter, helping us spend our dollars better, right? You know, we do have

some venture funding. And so we got to make sure we're being really good stewards of those dollars,

you know, and obviously aiming towards becoming a scalable business. I think we're really,

really close to that. And, you know, be able to provide a return on investment for those investors,

right? And in the dream there is, hey, if we're a success story here in Southeastern Michigan,

we can help draw more attention to all the great stories that are happening here, right?

Plus all the jobs you provide, absolutely, right? It really is one of those unique opportunities

where it can be that rising tide that lifts all boats. Nice, nice. No, Tim, and I'm really curious

about this. As a company for MATMA, you've got this wonderful technology and these cool robots that

have these amazing capabilities. What is the product? Is it the technology, the robot, the

physical thing we can touch? Or is it the service that the company provides in terms of helping

the municipalities and the regions have those optimally functioning water systems?

Yeah, so right now the answer is yes. I'll be both. Yeah, so I mean, we joke sometimes and

truly, we say we're doing some NASA stuff, right? Because we're entering a really tough

environment. We're doing something that largely hasn't been done before. You know, we're kind of

at that stage of like, it's not the best analogy, but like the iPhone before the iPhone was really

a big thing. There were cell phones, right? Everybody knew that they wanted a cell phone

with more features, more capabilities, but you didn't really know that you wanted an iPhone

yet when it came out. So what we're doing right now, we're talking to our customers, right? So

municipalities, utilities, anybody who owns, operates, or has some responsibility for this

underground water infrastructure, they know that they want the data, right? They're like,

we need resources that help us move from being very reactive to being very proactive, right?

So they know they need that, but they don't necessarily know what that looks like yet or

what the best flavor of that is. And so that's kind of what I'm trying to say here with those

analogies I'm using. We are at a place where we can provide news types of data and new types of

information that can allow them to move that. And so, you know, we're really excited to take

that and today provide the technology, provide the service, and then at the end, so we'll go out,

we'll do an inspection of this infrastructure, we'll collect video data, we'll collect acoustic

data, we'll collect a few different other types of data while we're down there, we will then

take that back, we'll process all that data, and we'll come up with what's referred to as a

conditional assessment report, okay? And so what that does is it tells the owner, operator, that

infrastructure, hey, here's where we saw things that looked abnormal. Here's where we saw things

that looked, you know, maybe concerning. There is a scoring matrix, you know, based on like the

criticality of a certain section. So if this section of the water main services a hospital,

high criticality, right? If it services, you know, a dog park, right? Low criticality.

You know, some of the dog parents might not think that, but I hear you. I love my dog,

but I can take my dog somewhere else to get some water real quick too. So, but yes, I definitely

have what you're saying. So the point being though, like there's a factor with the criticality,

and then there's a factor of what this is serving, what the customers are. And then there's a factor

for the condition, right? And then you do a multiplication to kind of say, hey, here's,

here's, you know, kind of a rat. We're, we're ultimately trying to get to

something closer to a probability of failure, okay? We're kind of on the cutting edge of trying

to push industry to come up with some, some models that will work for that too. But so today,

we provide everything. Longer term, what our goal is, is to be another tool in the toolbox of

entities that are out there doing this type of work already, right? So there are third party

inspectors. In some cases, I'll give you an example. You might find a community that pulls

water from one of the Great Lakes. And so what they have is they have an intake out in the Great

Lake. It typically is, you know, a few hundred feet offshore. You know, it goes maybe 60 to 100

feet down the ground, and then kind of comes all the way out into land underground and pops up into

a pumping station. Today, they'll use divers to go down there, right? So long term, we might be a

technology provider to the company that's currently diving, so that they maybe do diving for some

instances, but for others, they deploy our robotic technology, right? Please. Yeah. No, no, and in our

preparatory conversation, you talked about a recent example where that robot was in another state,

but it was remote controlled. Yeah. And I'm curious what that could look like. Does that

diver need to be on site with this? Or by the way, where I'm going with this, can we ultimately

turn the Detroit region into kind of a hub of monitoring these remote robots, which could be

all over the country? Wow. So you talked a little bit about, you know, what excites you in your

intro again, you know, taking the driver out, right? And so the example that you're talking about,

we just did a job down in Florida. We had a very quick turnaround time. We put our robot on a plane

with a team member. He went down there. He set it up. But our driver, our best driver on the team,

was not able to make the trip, right? There were some other commitments and some conflicts. But

what we were able to do is because of our technology stack, we were able to have our team

member go down to Florida, set up all the equipment, and then our driver actually remotely operated

the robot from Detroit, which was a really cool experience, right? Proving that technology out.

We have field camera kits as well. So we set up a field camera kit so we could actually see live

what was happening in Florida, you know, at the site where we were deploying the robot.

And the driver had access to that, the live feed of the camera of the robot itself

while he was in the infrastructure. And so, yeah, longer term, you know, there's either an opportunity

for us to remote pilot from, you know, Detroit to anywhere in the world, potentially.

Or potentially, you know, it's more of as we move further and further down the pathway,

we are looking at ways that autonomy and AI can help us. I can talk a little bit more about that

if you'd like me to. But, you know, we could potentially have an operation center in Detroit

that monitors if we are in kind of an AI and autonomous operation or robots in the future.

We monitor those. So if any issues get flagged, similar to autonomous vehicles on the roadways

today, right? We have someone who will pull that up on their computer really quickly,

potentially take over to manually maneuver, address the issue, and then set it back into

autonomous mode, if you will, right? So, yeah, really cool stuff. We're super excited about.

And again, part of the reason why I chose my robot.

Yeah, yeah.

Awesome. No, and I'm curious. So you touched on it, AI and autonomy. And I have to say,

I saw a demo of that robot and it looked so tricky to get it to go through a certain pipe to make

those turns. And I'm curious, is there an opportunity for AI or automation, especially when the water

is murky, when it's moving at a high rate of speed under high pressure? Can your job be made

easier by some of the autonomy capabilities that we know exist in the Detroit region?

So I love the way that you framed it right at the end. Can the job be made easier?

Right? And that really, I think, is the nearest term opportunity,

and kind of our progression path towards a potential future of full autonomy.

So let's talk a little bit about that water infrastructure again, okay?

If either of you have ever operated a jet ski or a boat, you know that if I turn, I only actually

turn in that direction if I'm applying force, right? So if I've got the motor and the impeller

running and pushing me, if I turn that off and I turn the wheel on the boat or the jet ski,

it doesn't do anything. So similarly in the pipe, right, I'm floating in this environment, right?

It's, you know, astronauts will go into pools and stuff to simulate zero G, right?

Because it's three-dimensional as well. You can go up, down, left, right, not just like a car going

down the road where, you know, it will not lift up off that road. Right? Exactly, right? So why is

that important, right? What am I really getting at? What I'm getting at is these are active live

water mains. So there is flow, right? People open up a faucet to wash their hands or they

flush a toilet or, you know, they fill a pot of water to cook, right? That is causing flow in the

pipe. And so what's happening is there's little turbulences that are that are all surrounding

our robot that can cause it to start to, you know, reorient and kind of move in all different

sorts of directions. So we've got accelerometers and things like that that can sense those.

And one of the best ways that we can get assistance from this type of technology today

is allowing our camera systems to provide feedback. So we've got a technology that'll try

and find the center of the pipe, okay? And then if the robot starts to sway in any direction,

we can use that to actually communicate with the motors to say, hey, I'm starting to sense that

I'm shifting a little bit to the right, like apply the right motor to force that end forward so I can

center myself again, right? We're looking at how we can use that same type of approach to allow

us to take turns inside of a pipe, right? We built our robot to the largest possible size

because we needed to pack a lot of technology into it in order to make those six inch

bends inside the infrastructure, right? Really difficult to do if I'm being honest with you.

Sounds like it would be. Yes. And so, you know, now not every piece of infrastructure underground

is six inches, but the way that we get into the system to access it is through fire hydrants.

The standard measurement for a fire hydrant is six inches. So we need to be able to fit through

that infrastructure before we get to any of the bigger infrastructure. And so ways that that

technology, the ability to use AI to find where the pipe's at, to help us kind of reorient ourselves

and make those turns easier is something that we're really working on too. The last thing I'll

say is sometimes we get a lot of sediment in the pipe, right? So this can be all sorts of

different types of materials. Sometimes we'll get air bubbles in the pipe. These things can actually

disorient us as we're trying to drive through. So our ability to train our AI and other systems to

identify that, okay, I know where the motors moved, like this was, you know, a straight center,

but I'm feeling accelerometers move a little bit, like it can sense other things that we

can't visually see as a driver with our own eyes, right? We're not in the pipe. We can't see that

it's rotated. So we can use those types of sensors and tools to help us figure out, you know, what

true north, true center looks like in the pipe environment again.

It's really amazing. So we should not be fearful when we see someone taking the

top off of the fire hydrant and dropping in some kind of little robot thing. This is just

Mott Mott doing his thing. I can say that for Mott Mott. If you see Mott Mott logos,

Mott Mott vests, right, and we're the ones out there, yes, you don't need to fear.

So, but yeah, I mean, it's, I think this is something that's that you're going to start to see

far more common occurring over the next few years, right, is communities starting to invest in these

types of services. And we believe we can offer them at a rate that makes a lot of sense, right?

You know, we're not, we're not, you know, fully there in terms of our final pricing

for this yet. But what I can say is we've looked at some of the competition that's out there.

And we are priced significantly lower than those competitors. We believe we offer a much

higher quality and value of service. You know, we offer, you know, more sensors. We offer the

actual camera inspection. We offer our post processing. So we've got a number of value

ads that we think makes a ton of sense. And again, our long term goal from a customer standpoint

is to allow them to shift resources from that reactive budget, right, over to the proactive

budget. Because again, when you do that, every single pipe replacement that you do is less

expensive because you're not rushing to get it done. You're able to schedule it in advance. You're

able to, you know, put it on a certain timetable to pay the lowest prices for all those types of

services. Makes great sense. What do you see as the, what's next for Mott Mott, you know, in terms of

its growth and where you see it in the next, I don't know, four or five years? Well, I mean,

I'll be honest with you, the dream in five years is that we're a unicorn, right? We're a unicorn

company here in the Metro Detroit area. You know, that's a very ambitious goal, right? Very,

very few companies reach unicorn status. So, but you got to be able to dream, right? And if you

don't have that North Star you're going after, then, you know, you're kind of, you're just bumping

around and hoping to get somewhere. But in the short term, you know, I see us finalizing our

commercial product this year, getting out and deploying in a number of communities, starting

to educate communities on the availability of this type of information, a service,

working with, with other customers, engineering consultancy firms that might be under contract

with municipalities or utilities to manage this infrastructure today, potentially third party,

you know, inspectors that do other types of services, like I mentioned, the diving and that

sort of thing, and kind of growing our market. Right now, we're laser focused on the potable

water systems. Our technologies have a number of direct application, you know, to other types of

services. We've talked about in open waters, do we inspect ballast tanks on, you know, ships and

things that come through for invasive species, right? Do we inspect, you know, other types of

infrastructure? Maybe it's not potable water, but maybe it's sewer systems. You know, so there's

a number of other aspects that we can get into. But we think that this is kind of our best opportunity

today in that that potable water systems market, where, you know, we've got a significant advantage

over our competition. And there's there's a massive need, like my biggest concern when I first joined

the company was whether or not like we really had a strong customer base. I sat in three customer

discovery meetings my first week. And what I can tell you, as soon as we started really, you know,

informing our customers on what our capabilities are going to be, their immediate response was

how fast can you get out here and show us in person? Like, can we get you out here next week?

We're like, well, not not quite. Right? Let's put some time in the calendar a little bit, you know,

down down the road. But, you know, we're getting really, really close to that commercial product.

And so we're going to need to scale, we're going to need to build more and more of these units,

we're going to need to hire teams that'll go out and, you know, at least initially be providing

the field services. Those team members will have opportunities then, you know, transition to other

roles inside the team, right, because they'll have the full experience of what it's like to go out

there and help the customer. Maybe they'll be trainers of the trainers, right. So like I mentioned

that in our conversations earlier, where we would actually train, you know, the local utilities staff

on how to operate this infrastructure or this this hardware software solution, you know, to inspect

their own infrastructure, right. We have, you know, models around that. So there's there's a lot of

really exciting things happening over the course of the next, you know, one to two years. But yeah,

we're striving to try and make this business as successful as possible and really centered around

Michigan. Thank you. I love it. For me, I love what you said. Look, you got to be able to dream.

And I think if anyone can have a dream and the place to do that is certainly here in Detroit,

in our new kind of Detroit Regional Advanced Mobility Ecosystem, like this is the place to

do that. Thank you so much for joining us. We wish Mott Mott the best of luck. And we do hope to

continue to see, you know, great things coming from you in the future. Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

Love to see you succeeding in Detroit. Love knowing that Jim was part of that journey as well.

So, Tim, thank you so much for joining us on the mobility table. Thank you both and thank you,

Jim. And that's the end of this episode. We look forward to seeing you at the next mobility table.

About this episode

Detroit’s mobility ecosystem sets the stage for motmot’s in-pipe robotics and data-driven approach to water infrastructure. Tim Slusser explains how proactive, information-rich maintenance can reduce replacement costs compared with emergency repairs. The team’s robots operate inside pressurized potable-water pipes, handling tuberculation, tight diameters, and sharp bends, while using sensors and AI to navigate disturbances. Inspections generate conditional assessment reports with scoring matrices and probability-of-failure modeling, and deployments can be remotely operated with live camera feeds.

accelerometers active, highly pressurized water infrastructure AI and autonomy full autonomy making a 90 degree turn in six inch infrastructure potable water infrastructure PSI sensors tuberculation

Toyota Supra

Original notes

Tim Slusser joined Jeannine and Bernard at the Mobility Table to explore the application of mobility technologies on aging infrastructure for maintenance and inspection purposes, the resources available for organizations working to create advanced mobility technologies and the potential for AI and greater autonomy in motmot’s technologies.

Tim Slusser is the operations director at motmot. He previously served as the chief of mobility innovation under Mayor Duggan. Throughout his career, Tim has occupied a variety of roles across business development and mobility.

The Mobility Table

The Global Epicenter of Mobility (GEM)

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