The digital revolution has given business powerful tools to draw the most value out of data. However, business is not alone when it comes to benefiting from data science. Companies and industries outside the usual scope of the enterprise world also make use of data. Of note is the racing community, where fractions of a second matter and any advantage could be crucial.

To shed some light on technology in the racing world, Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, visited the IBM Edge 2016 conference in Las Vegas. There, they met with Matt Cadieux, CIO at Red Bull Racing.

Collecting data

The conversation started with a look at what sort of data the Red Bull team collects. Cadieux explained that the scale of data and its capability to process it has grown exponentially in the past few years. The team has spent a huge amount of effort to develop systems that can collect and secure all that information.

Cadieux mentioned how they collect video, sound, telemetry and other data channels. The amount of input and the richness of the data is huge. To process that data, Red Bull runs a private cloud because it needs that infrastructure on-premises. The team is, however, bursting out to a public cloud, depending on what problems they’re trying to solve.

Blurring the lines

“We have a huge demand put on us to find the right solution,” Cadieux said. The team finds that solution by talking to leaders in the industry. The key in racing is that the driver must be in control of the car. Because of this, the technology, the car and the driver must be strong. Cadieux described how they use data science to provide the driver with decision support.

The topic then turned toward autonomous cars. Cadieux himself felt that while he’d rather be driving, a lot of commuters could reclaim wasted time by giving control over to their vehicles. In his opinion, the transition will be challenging, but the amount of money put in by major automakers, and the advances they’ve seen, means autonomous cars will happen.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Edge 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE