Celerum Limited has appointed David Gladding as Chief Executive Officer to drive the commercial and technical development of the Company’s novel artificial-intelligence to make logistics more efficient.
David has more than 30 years’ experience at senior levels in software and IT services companies, including those specialising in fleet management. He was Senior Vice President Global Sales for Chevin Fleet Solutions and has also worked for Civica and Fleet Clear over the past 12 years gaining a wide and in-depth understanding of the industry.
Celerum is at an important stage of development. The Company launched its first commercial product, Truck Logistics System (TLS), earlier this year to cut road haulage costs, carbon emissions and delivery times for small to medium-sized truck fleets, which is now winning customers. The first was Colin Lawson Transport, a haulage firm based in Aberdeen, operating 75 trucks and about 150 trailers. Frontier IP holds a 33.8 per cent equity stake in the Company.
Other potential applications for the technology are in the maritime, energy, and telecommunication sectors where positive use cases have already been identified.
Metaheuristic algorithms lie at the heart of Celerum’s technology. They are designed to find the best solution out of a range of possible solutions to particularly complex problems. A subset of these is Nature Inspired Computing, which use lessons from the natural world where evolution has overcome inefficiency. For example, bees and ants are extremely good at finding the best routes to food sources or returning to their nests.
Researchers have found metaheuristic algorithms achieve a high degree of accuracy when used to predict and propose “what if” scenarios, providing a basis to explore. This formed the basis to explore industry applications. Celerum’s technology is based on more than 25 years’ research into metaheuristics by Celerum founder and chair Professor John McCall, Head of the School of Computing, Science and Digital Media at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. He is a director of the Company and continues to support development of the software.
Unlike other forms of AI, such as machine learning, algorithms based on metaheuristics do not need to be trained on past data or special training datasets, helping to make Celerum’s software easy to deploy. It needs no special hardware and resides in the cloud to give customers access to an evolving platform. Celerum’s AI works as soon as it is activated to enable customers to take advantage of opportunities sooner than most other systems.
I am excited to be joining Celerum at this time. We have an opportunity to help businesses understand what their data is telling them, giving them easy access to very smart technology that will help simplify complex business challenges. The real power behind our AI is how it helps educate users when interrogating data to increase their success of making informed business decisions. Whilst our platform is industry agnostic, we have won customers from the fleet management industry, which is worth $27 billion a year globally. Our platform is unique in this market, and I am expecting to see a great deal of interest. We know that this market is intensely competitive, where every marginal gain is important, and we believe our software can give customers an important edge in efficiency and productivity gains, cutting costs and making their operations greener.
David Gladding, Chief Executive Officer, Celerum
David has a very keen interest in how we use data to improve business efficiencies and reducing the carbon footprint, along with his vast experience in software and the fleet industry, we are excited that David is leading Celerum to future success.
Professor John McCall, Head of the School of Computing, Science and Digital Media at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, and Celerum director
I am delighted with David’s appointment as Celerum’s Chief Executive. His experience means he is the right person to drive the Company forward following the successful launch of its first commercial product.
Neil Crabb, Frontier IP Chief Executive Officer
About Metaheuristics
Metaheuristics are a development of heuristics: a heuristic is a cognitive short cut used by humans and computers to arrive at a decision or solution in the face of confusing and sometimes conflicting data.
Metaheuristic algorithms are designed to derive the best possible solutions to complex problems where there are no perfect answers. These problems could involve incomplete or imperfect data, unpredictability, tight timeframes, unpredictability, and limited computing power.
There are many different strategies used to develop metaheuristic algorithms. They include local search, where an existing, single solution is refined to develop an optimal answer; global search, where several solutions are collectively refined to solve a problem in the best way; and nature inspired computing, where lessons from the natural world are applied.
An algorithm based on the theory of evolution, for example, will test many potential answers until the “fittest” emerges.
Often different metaheuristic approaches are combined – a development known as hybrid metaheuristics. They can be applied to many different problems. Unlike other forms of artificial intelligence, such as machine learning, metaheuristics do not have to be trained on large datasets.
Celerum has applied these methodologies and developed bespoke algorithms specifically for logistic companies to help them tackle the complexity of managing many trucks and drivers. Many firms currently rely on multiple legacy systems.
Because of the way metaheuristics work, they are very efficient in terms of the amount of data they process. Metaheuristic algorithms do not need to be trained on large datasets. Therefore, they provide a very cost-effective way to reach an intelligent solution that would otherwise be out of reach for many small to medium size logistic businesses. The algorithms are able to work on everyday computers, mobile phones and other devices.
