Our roundup of the latest news from metro Detroit and Michigan businesses as well as announcements from government agencies. To share a business or nonprofit story, please send us a message.
Detroit’s Fire & Ice Festival Features Winter Fun with Medieval Twist
The Detroit Riverfront Conservancy’s Winter at Valade celebration, which is presented by Friends of Robert C. Valade Park, kicks off its first of four themed events this weekend with a Fire & Ice Festival.
Fire & Ice weekend, sponsored by Bedrock, will feature medieval fun with a winter twist. All weekend long guests can enjoy oversized outdoor fireplaces, marshmallow roasting, live performances, and an ice carving competition.
Guests can also purchase a turkey leg to eat and participate in hands-on activities like archery, inflatable ax throwing, and trying their hand at ice carving. Photo opportunities abound with characters such as Elsa from “Frozen” and Renaissance fair performers wandering the park.
There will also be a majestic throne intricately carved from blocks of solid ice.
The signature moment of the weekend will be the lighting of the 7-foot-tall Fire and Ice Tower, which will transform into a giant bonfire at 6 p.m. on Saturday.
Fire & Ice Festival is open Jan. 6 from 4-9 p.m., Jan. 7 from noon-9 p.m., and Jan. 8 from noon-7 p.m. Robert C. Valade Park is located at 2670 East Atwater along the East Riverfront in downtown Detroit.
For more information about Winter at Valade or about Fire & Ice Festival, visit here.
AVL Mobility in Plymouth Township Accelerates Ground, Air, Space Technology
AVL Mobility Technologies Inc., a Plymouth Township-based technology mobility pioneer since 1948, is rising from the ground to technologies in air and space, as demonstrated at a press conference today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Partners Northrop Grumman and Eviation highlighted some of their latest air and space technologies developed jointly with AVL.
“For years AVL has been leading the charge in automotive and ground mobility,” says Stephan Tarnutzer, president of AVL Mobility. “What we are learning with our projects in air and space is pushing the envelope even further. Imagine the energy needed to power an aircraft during takeoff or the thermal management needed to optimize a battery system in the extreme climate of outer space. AVL is able to take these extreme use cases and apply the lessons learned to other mobility sectors, which in turn leads to new applications and more efficient solutions.”
At the press conference, former astronaut Rick Mastracchio, director of business development at Northrop Grumman, highlighted Northrop Grumman’s Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) concept. The LTV, part of NASA’s Artemeis program to return astronauts to the moon, will be an essential vehicle to transport astronauts and experiments on the lunar surface. AVL is supporting electric vehicle design and autonomy systems for Northrup Grumman’s LTV concept.
“Our vehicle design will offer sustainable, flexible, and affordable logistics support for enhanced human and robotic exploration of the lunar surface and, ultimately, Mars, Mastracchio says. “Our partnership with AVL will help deliver lunar mobility for future generations.”
Eviation Aircraft demonstrated the future of aviation in September 2022 with the first flight of Alice, an all-electric commuter eCTOL (electric conventional take-off and landing) aircraft. Alice is a catalyst to restoring short-haul flights, which have historically contributed more carbon emissions than long-haul flights. Alice is positioned to enable regional air travel that is carbon-free and economically viable.
“Electric conventional take-off and landing aircraft, like Eviation’s Alice, represent the most promising sector of advanced air mobility,” says Gregory Davis, president and CEO of Eviation. “The Alice, designed from scratch around the requirements of electric propulsion, is leading the shift toward carbon-free, cost-effective, and convenient air travel.
“We value AVL’s contributions to the energy storage systems for the first flight of Alice as we lead the industry into the electric age of aviation and usher in a new era of environmental sustainability.”
Livonia’s GuardKnox Lays Framework for Smartphonization of Automotive Industry
GuardKnox, a Livonia-based automotive technology company is collaborating with California’s Wind River, which delivers software for intelligent systems, to enable developers to build secure containerized applications for software-defined vehicles of the future.
The combination of GuardKnox’s high-performance SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) core framework and corresponding tools suite with Wind River’s industry-leading VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS) that is part of Wind River Studio will provide OEMs with another layer of flexibility for software distribution, decreasing development and deployment time leading to shorter time to market for the innovative automotive applications that define a new era of mobility.
GuardKnox is showcasing a demo of the technologies this week at CES in Las Vegas.
Adaptive manufacturing, on-the-edge processing, and intelligent systems are becoming the go-to production and development methodologies for the automotive industry; once properly harnessed, such processes will unlock capabilities that will power vehicles, the companies say.
The combination of GuardKnox and Wind River solutions enables joint customers to build SOA-based applications on the VxWorks RTOS to use state-of-the-art technologies such as OCI Containers for rapid applications deployment.
“Our collaboration with GuardKnox will enable engineers and developers to advance the rollout of placing innovative features directly into the hands of drivers,” says Christina Ungaro, vice president and head of corporate development at Wind River. “GuardKnox and Wind River technologies will allow automakers to utilize flexible and cost-effective solutions that can reduce complexities and shorten time-to-market for new automotive applications and features.”
Moshe Shlisel, CEO of GuardKnox, says: “The automotive industry is at a significant juncture as the shift toward the software-defined vehicle continues to occur at a rapid pace. The GuardKnox and Wind River collaboration ensures OEMs and Tier 1s are able to bring new vehicle features to market in a matter of weeks, and to upgrade existing functionalities as the market demands.”
For more information, visit here.
Midwest Real Estate News Ranks Dickinson Wright Ranked No. 2 in ‘Best of the Best’
For the fourth year in a row, the real estate practice of Dickinson Wright in Troy is ranked as the number two real estate law group in the “Best of the Best” report, published by Midwest Real Estate News.
“We are thrilled to once again be named the number two law firm in the ‘Best of the Best’ report,” says Michael Lusardi, chair of the firm’s Real Estate Practice Group. “This year’s rankings, once again, demonstrate our success in working side-by-side with our clients to execute their real estate plans from conception to completion.”
More than 60 law firms in the Midwest participate in the annual report. The rankings are calculated based on the total number of transactions completed in 2021, according to Midwest Real Estate News.
To see the complete list of the “2022 Best of the Best,” visit here.
U-M Physics Department to Host Chat with Astronaut Josh Cassada in Space
The University of Michigan Physics Department in Ann Arbor will host the first 2023 Saturday Morning Physics event with astronaut and physicist Josh Cassada, who will answer questions live from the International Space Station.
The event will take place at 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 14 in the Central Campus Classroom Building 1420 Auditorium (1225 Geddes Ave.). Commentary will be provided by former NASA engineer John Foster, a U-M professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences and professor of aerospace engineering.
The hybrid event also will be livestreamed via YouTube. Click this link to send a question to Cassada by Jan. 11 (those in attendance may have the opportunity to read their question during the event).
11th Annual Stock to Scholarship Challenge Announced
SageView Advisory Group in Bloomfield Hills has opened registration for the 2023 Stock to Scholarship Challenge, which will have actual trading dates running from Jan. 30 through April 21.
The goal of the challenge is to help high school students in Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne counties understand the basics of investing in the stock market by participating in a risk-free environment with the opportunity to win scholarship money.
Each student will be provided access to an online investment account pre-funded with $100,000 in “play money,” which they use to purchase various stocks and mutual funds.
Participants place trades in their portfolios at will with the goal to amass more “money” in their account than any other participant. The top three students who accrue the most wealth by the end of the challenge period will be awarded scholarship money.
Registration ends Jan. 26. Students can sign up here.