Digitally Curious

S7 Episode 9: Reimagining Real-Time: Motorsport, AI, and the Future of Precision Tracking with Gill Switalski

• with Actionable Futurist® Andrew Grill • Season 7 • Episode 9

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In this episode of Digitally Curious, host Andrew Grill sits down with Gill Switalski, CEO of Infrared Kinetics, to explore how cutting-edge infrared technology is revolutionising real-time tracking and data precision - not just in motorsport, but across a host of industries.

Gill shares her journey from corporate lawyer to tech innovator, describing how curiosity, intellectual property expertise, and strategic partnerships have driven Infrared Kinetics’ success. 

Together, we dive into:

  • The role of digital twins in bridging the physical and virtual worlds
  • Why GPS is no longer sufficient and how infrared tech delivers robust, interference-proof data, even under extreme conditions
  • How the company’s miniature, powerful tracking emitters are opening motorsport and STEM education to a global audience
  • Real-world applications in smart cities, railways, defence, logistics, and the world’s first precision drone delivery
  • Ways the business model is transforming revenues for sporting circuits and offering new opportunities in gaming, advertising, and sports betting
  • Gill's vision for infrastructure that makes society safer, more efficient, and more inclusive

More information

IRK website

Gill on LinkedIn


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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Digitally Curious, a podcast to help you navigate the future of AI and beyond. Your host is world-renowned futurist and author of Digitally Curious, Andrew Grill.

SPEAKER_01:

Today's guest is Jill Switelski, CEO of Infrared Kinetics, a trailblazing tech company shaking up what's possible with real-time tracking and precision data. Formerly recognised as one of Europe's most dynamic general counsel, Jill now leads a team that's transforming how high-speed objects are tracked, not just in motorsport, but across industries where milliseconds decide who wins and who loses. With expertise spanning both lore and disruptive technology and partnerships that reach from Formula One icons to major enterprise players, Jill's here to share insights into the infrastructure challenges of the AI decade and how infrared kinetics breakthroughs are setting new standards for the future. Welcome, Jill. Oh, thank you for having me, Andrew. Now we met at an event titled The Future of Technology following the UK election last year at the offices of Harbaugh and Lewis when we discovered we had mutual connections to Steve Young at Dell and the late David Kelty. We chatted about infrared kinetics and I decided you're a must-have on the podcast. So here you are. Now you've had a fascinating career journey from being a corporate lawyer now to leading a breakthrough technology company. What sparked your transition from the legal world to becoming CEO of a company that's literally redefining real-time intelligence?

SPEAKER_02:

I've always been interested in intellectual property, and when I was a baby lawyer, I was very lucky because I worked at a company called Quaker Oates and then I moved to Sony, and it was the start of the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act a million years ago, 1988, when the value of intellectual property was in its infancy in being recognised. You didn't even at that point have on balance sheet valuations, which would seem crazy to most businesses today, bearing in mind things like patent box and RD tax credits. Finance directors are literally begging CTOs, give me some intellectual property that I can put onto the books. But it didn't happen then. But Sony was really forward-thinking, and I was so lucky because I got to work with Akia Marita, and that's when I started my journey looking at how you can transform the world through IP. And that's when I was David Kelty's founding client. I was the first client of Kelty. Um, God bless him. So, and he's he was godfather to my two sons as well. So that's how I began.

SPEAKER_01:

It's amazing how in the technology space there's serendipity, and in London, I've met so many people that have this interwoven connection, and we actually saw each other again a few weeks ago at a Dell event where I was speaking, and it was great to see you there as well. We'll talk about your relationship with Dell in a minute. Let's turn to motorsport. With Lord Alexander Heskith, the Legendary Formula One team founder who gave James Hunt his big break on your board. How has his motorsport pedigree influenced your approach to proving technology under the most extreme conditions that you get in Formula One?

SPEAKER_02:

He is amazing, and it's really strange because people sometimes say to me, is he still around? He is a joy to work with. He can read the room like nobody, and if anybody underestimates him, it's at their own peril. Um, so he is very challenging. And the most important thing he's wanted for me, Andrew, is this has to work all day, every day, and any fool, even you, Gilly, need to be able to operate this. So that's what he made me do. And he was instrumental in us going to Mallory Park. Um, and again, it's interesting because when you look at the tech and you look at the exploitation of intellectual property portfolios, you if you haven't got the system out there that people can almost touch and see, then it's not real to people. And it's not enough to just be very clever or just have patents. You've got to be able to demonstrate you can do it. So we've been so lucky. We've had legends like Pat Simmons, who's been a huge supporter, the old lead engineer at Formula One, who's now working with Mario Andretti in the States, come along and see that we could do what we it we said we could do on the CAN. And Alexander has been front and centre of that.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, let's talk about the technology and what's the exact problem that you're solving?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, what we've done is we've married the real world in the digital world. So uh if you look at things like GPS, even when you're looking at things like what three words, um, GPS is only good to a certain tune. If you go, if you're in London and you you don't know, you're in a part of London you don't know, you walk between two office blocks, you cannot find where you are because GPS is blocking. You've only got to look at what's happening in space with satellites. Again, GPS is vulnerable to interference by foreign powers. But infrared isn't, it's resilient all the time, and it's based on military-grade tech, which is where it was born out of, where the inventor, Professor Bradley, was lead engineer at BA systems. So we it it does everything that we need it to do and it locks on and it doesn't lose.

SPEAKER_01:

You said we're trying to build the AI decade on infrastructure design when the Walken was cutting edge. Can you paint us a picture of just how stark this mismatch is? I mean, GPS has been around for a long time and the technology hasn't really evolved because you've got to put it up in space and you can't really tinker with it.

SPEAKER_02:

No, you can't. And as I say, you're dependent on the satellite signals. So you with the thing about IRK and the infrared is because of the way that we squirt the data, because it is infrared, we're not using images. So the data is compressed. So when you come to Mallory, you will look out of the window of the control tower, Andrew, and you'll see all the cars racing around at high speed. And you look at the screen and you'll see the digital twin, and that's where we're able to put the ghost car on the grid, the extra car, whether you're NASCAR, IndyCar, F1, uh, World of Outlaws, Dirt Track Racing, anything, we can put the ghost car on the grid, and anyone anywhere in the world can race with their real-time heroes. And the other beauty of it is because we do it on a pixel phone, it means you don't need any expensive kit. One of my most exciting things is there's a video and it's kids using this as a console. So you could be anywhere in the world in a country where you know there's not much infrastructure, but you'll be able to join in. And what does that mean? That means that we can find the next Formula One champion from anywhere. They don't need to be uh in a in a a motor school, they don't need to be in the UK or America, they can literally be anywhere. It opens up the opportunities to everybody, and it obviously it feeds into STEM, so there's a huge education piece in it as well.

SPEAKER_01:

So you mentioned memory park. Walk me through what a setup looks like. So you go to the track, you've got to put cameras around there. How does it actually work?

SPEAKER_02:

We've got masts that uh are around the circuit, and then we've got the cameras um that are on top of the masts, so we've got a 360 of the circuit, and then we've got emitters that are like a two P piece that go on the vehicles, and we're refining those all the time because we're now doing them for um bikes like Moto GP, so they've got to be super, super light and super tiny. Um, so the the thing that I'm doing all of the time with all of this tech is refining and refining and refining. So I'm obviously advancing the intellectual property portfolios you'd expect me to do, so I always stay ahead of the game, but at the same time, in tandem, we invest a huge amount of money in RD to make sure that we operate at an optimal level the whole time. So our first emitters were like the size of an orange, and within 12 months, we've got them, as I say, to the size of a two-p piece, and they'll become smaller. Um, and and that just makes it easier for it to be used across all motorsports.

SPEAKER_01:

So, motorsports is a really good example because it's high pressure, it's fast, it's noisy, it's dirty, and so if it works there, it's going to work almost everywhere. The digital twin you mentioned, I've talked about digital twins on the podcast before. For our listener that is coming across this term for the first time, what is a digital twin and why should they care about them?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, what it does is it marries the real world with the virtual world. And one of the things that we see in all the research we've done, the younger generation, don't want AI. They want to be able to participate in the real world, and that's what we allow them to do with the marrying of that. So you see, as I said before, you look out of the control tower, you see the cars, you look at the screen, and it's a true digital representation of what's there in real time. There's absolutely no lag. It is it's faster than you can think or blink. Um, so you've got that, and and it leads on to all sorts of things. I mean, that the there are various verticals in there. We chose motorsports because it's something that people can relate to. Track limits is a massive issue. So we've now proved that we can in real time show if a car's gone out of track limits, you're not waiting hours to find out if you've gone down the podium or you're not even on the podium, you know straight away. And it's a safety aid and a training aid as well. So you can track everything uh everywhere on the circuit. So we've seen examples in Formula One where there's been a vehicle on the circuit that people weren't aware of and there'd been near misses and there have been fatalities. Whereas with our system, nothing like that could happen. You know where everything is all of the time.

SPEAKER_01:

Motorsports, one example. Uh you've identified defence, logistics, and smart cities. Walk me through how your technology could be used in those environments.

SPEAKER_02:

We can do road pricing, we can do dynamic road pricing um on motorways because they've got the infrastructure, they've already got the lighting there. So it'd be very easy to say if you're on the M25 at 3 a.m., there's no charge. If you're on the M25 at 8 a.m., it's going to cost you X. And why is that important? Because they're going to lose all this money on uh fuel duty because we're moving to electric, yes, slower than everybody thought, but it's still coming. And I'm amazed that we've got this tech that answers those problems. Um and it it's been like wading through treacle trying to get anyone to look at us. But those are the sort of problems that we can solve. And as I say, the the satellite issues, the jamming of satellites. Um we have uh we're launching on Thursday, super exciting. We're doing um the world's first um drone delivery. So we're going to be delivering precisely to a tiny spot, again, like a two P piece. We'll be delivering the cargo there to the emitter. So that for me again is phenomenal. What does it mean? It means you can have your pizza delivered to your balcony. If you currently look at the GPS offerings, they can get you near, but they can't get you there. And we can get you right where you need to be. So we'll be doing all of that. Drone corridors will come, and again, that that's that that is going to happen, and you're going to need some form of regulation, a bit like air traffic control. IRK can come in there with a safety case, so you'll be able to run the drone corridors. Um, you could use railway lines that go straight into the city as a sort of a guide, but you'll have that safety case there. You're not going to have to send a man in a van to find out what's happened when there's a problem on a railway track. You just send the drone up, it has a look, it goes back, squirts the pictures, and docks and recharges again. So you just have the it'll all be automated. It will allow railways to run run more efficiently because you'll know where every train is all of the time. So you'll be able to run more stock on the lines safely. So you'll be able to have more trains, um, less stock needed back at the ranch because you'll be running them through and knowing exactly where they are for the whole time. And as I say, the safety case for that is huge.

SPEAKER_01:

Infrared, and again, just for our listeners, if you've got a remote control and you point it at the telly, that's why the telly changes. But if you point it away, it isn't working, it needs line of sight. So, how will you have to have the uh receivers on a railway track? Will you have to have them every sort of hundred metres or so?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, you can have the emitters on a train, so you're not you have the emitters on the train, and then because you've got the the gantries, um, you can have the the cameras on the gantries at the infrareds. So you the infrastructure again is already there. So it's not massive. And what we've done is when we first started at Mallory, obviously it's an experiment, it's a lab, the costs are huge, but we've brought the costs right down now through a very clever use of how we employ the tech. For a small circuit, you'd probably be looking at less than half a million pounds, and the revenue streams you get from that will be phenomenal. One of the things that was said to me when I was actually at um Formula One recently was uh it was somebody very senior at Microsoft saying he loved it, but he only saw his driver for probably two minutes of the whole of the race. Well, you can follow your driver. If you want to look at the action on a hairpin bend, you can be there. If you want a 360 of the track, you can look up the whole of the track. So it really gives um engagement for fans in the stadium. But Ditto at home, because you can do the same at home with your phone, you can just view wherever you want to. If you don't want a game, you can just view whatever. If you want a game with the family, you'll get your phones out and race against each other. Um, so there's a myriad of offerings that will really enhance any sporting event.

SPEAKER_01:

So your system processes vast amounts of data with near zero latency by focusing only on beacon emissions rather than the full imagery. To me, this sounds counterintuitive. How does less data actually give you more precision and speed?

SPEAKER_02:

It's the way we compress it. So it's how you compress it that gives you exactly that quicker, speedier. And we uh because we don't we don't use um the normal camera imagery, camera imagery sucks up so much bandwidth. It was really interesting. Um, when Donald Trump went to the NASCAR Blue Ribbon event, there were loads of comments. These poor commentators, people were really critical of the of the way that the thing was presented on the screen. And it was nothing to do with the commentators, it was the GPS lost um uh uh lock, and therefore the commentators couldn't see where anything was, so you had big periods of time where you weren't looking at anything on the screen. So that would never happen with our tech.

SPEAKER_01:

Now you mentioned Professor Andrew Bradley, who was instrumental in developing this technology. So, how did the collaboration between academic research, motorsport expertise, and your business acumen create something that established tech giants haven't achieved yet?

SPEAKER_02:

You raised something interesting when we last met, which is how come it hasn't been done by bigger companies? And I think when you're a behemoth, sometimes you're not looking at what's in front of you and seeing what the applications can be. You're looking at the next thing, you're not examining what's actually in that cupboard and thinking, well, I've got that already. What if I used it in a slightly different way? So um I was introduced to Andrew by Sir Richard Evans, who was the ex-CEO and then chair of BAE Systems, and he is now our chairman, and he said, Oh, this guy uh he worked for me, he says he's got some ideas. So Andrew came to see me and he'd applied for a UK patent, the worst thing you could possibly do, because it's then in the public domain, and anyone can use it. So I explained to him what he needed to do, and I don't think he was convinced. So I asked Kelty to give him a uh a bit of time. I said, Would you see him for me? Because I pay you a lot of money, would you give him an hour of your time for free? And they took him through what I'd said and and pointed out actually, she she knows what she's doing, this is what you need to do. So he came back to me and we worked out how we would structure it, and then we applied for the first patents, and it's gone on from there, and we worked very closely together. And um, when the Ukraine war started, we were working with um a huge company, and they said, Would you park everything? Because we now have to do different things. And I said, You can't park anything where intellectual property is concerned because there's always someone snapping at your heels, so I've got to continuously enhance this offering, um, and and that's what I did. So we we just thought, let's just get busy and get that out there. And we built Mallory in five months, start to finish. Um, and now um it's fantastic. You asked me a question about what's it like in the control tower. When I first started at Mallory, and you were in the control tower, it was absolute chaos. It was like, is it working? Is it this? What's happening? Now, when you go into the control tower, it's completely calm, it's completely peaceful, everything works at the touch of a button, and it's just fantastic. So I was there a few weeks ago, and we had a rig set up, and we had um a gamer as well gaming on a screen, and we're able to film the whole lot. So you're seeing the race outside, you're seeing the race on the screen, you're seeing someone gaming on their phone, and then you're seeing someone in the rig racing real time, the ghost cars out there, and they're on the rig racing in the ghost car. So, yeah, it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01:

We mentioned your work with Dell and Steve Young. So, how's Dell helping you get this to market?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, what was brilliant about that was we started off, we were really tiny. I obviously put my own money into it to kick start it, and uh getting the attention of someone like Dell is really tricky because there's loads of businesses out there that want to do this, want to do that. I think the fact that we were creating a real product at Mallory meant that they looked at us. So we weren't going along just saying we've got some clever ideas. We were able to say, This is what we're building, come and take a look. And they looked at that and they helped us look at military grade tech for the laptops that sit at the bottom of the um polls that process everything. Um, and they just really believed in us um and and opened doors. And I I've been really, really lucky because I work with some amazing senior people at Dell and have been invited into things as a result of that. But they do they do believe in what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01:

So let's look at the business model and what the future looks like. You've described uh Infray Connects as creating revenue streams before, during, and after events rather than just being a sunk cost like GPS systems. Walk us through how this transforms the economic for circuits, event organizers, and sponsors.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think what's fantastic about it is lots of tracks, um, small circuits run on a shoestring. And what we can do there is you can have digital advertising, which is very easy to do. So you could, depending on the demographic, um, you can um let fans pay for a different in-fan experience, so there's some revenue there. Um, if you're doing uh race days, you can race against yourself, you can test your times, your vehicles tracked when you go home. You've still got that race package. You're not just going away with a video and looking at yourself, you can actually race against yourself again, beat your times, um, race against your mates who've been at the same event with you. So it means that circuits don't have to charge an awful lot, but there will be significant revenue generation for there that they're not getting at the moment. And for bigger circuits, it's endless because you've got the streaming, so you can work out what you're going to do on that, however, you want to monetize that. You've got the gaming. And it's very interesting. Formula One made a comment a few months ago about how far behind they were in the world of sports betting. Well, obviously, this just reads on to sports betting as well, because you can bet however you want to bet. What this allows you to do is tightly manage it, but also make sure that circuits exploit it in a responsible way. The safety case is huge, and also the STEM case or STEAM, if you want to add the arts into it, bringing that younger generation into things. So it alters the demographic of racing because the you can look at it now and you, you know, it's it's white male 40s, 50s, that will change completely. It's going to be young people, and obviously with all the safety wrappers around it, children learning about it and being interested in it because they can see racing is something super exciting to them, but they don't realize they're learning about physics, they're learning about math while this is all going on. And you can tell I'm really excited about it. I really am. I'm really proud of what my team have achieved.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, you're clearly building infrastructure for what you call a new reality sync standard. So let's look forward in five years' time when this technology is deployed globally across multiple industries. How do you think it will change the way we interact with the world around us?

SPEAKER_02:

You will be able to step back and absorb in a way that you can't at the moment. If things aren't always working, if you're waiting for something to go wrong, then you're you're almost on edge, aren't you? That's sort of slightly hyper-vigilant. This works all day, every day. So it takes all of that stress out of it. And I don't know where I'll be in five years' time because we'll be looking at different things, we will have done different things. And for the technically minded on here who understand things like continuations, forback positions, how you future-proof, we're doing all of that at the moment, but we're also continuously developing. So I think life will be a lot easier, and I think it's a testament to how you can use AI to the greater good. Um, you know, you don't need to be nervous about it. If you if you approach it in the right way and you make it work for you, don't let tail wag dog, uh, dog wags tail. And that's what IRK will enable digital industries to do in any vertical.

SPEAKER_01:

Final question before I quick fire round. What's your ultimate vision for IRK's impact on society?

SPEAKER_02:

You don't say things change the world. What it does is it gives you certainty, you've got certainty that if you're using this tech, it will always work for you. So if you're delivering medicines to somebody, you know they're gonna get there and you'll always know where they are. You if you're delivering something in a war theatre, you aren't using troops, you're using this tech. If you're delivering something in a high-risk environment, you know it's going to be okay. So, you know, the jet isn't going to fall off the aircraft carrier because it will know precisely where to land and it will land in that spot and it will be safe for everybody. So I just think enhancing people's lives and making people's lives safer.

SPEAKER_01:

We're up to my favourite part of the show, the quickfire round where we learn more about our guests. Window or aisle? Window. Your biggest hope for this year and next.

SPEAKER_02:

I'd like government to really look at tech like ours and allow us in. It's very difficult to get in. And I think that is that is the biggest thing for this year and next year. Please look at us and give us a chance to explain what we can do for you.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I know that some senior politicians do listen to our podcast and their advisors do, so let's hope they listen to this one. I wish that AI could do all of my admin. The first thing I asked ChatGPT was How creative can you be without getting it wrong? The app you use most on your phone. WhatsApp. The best advice you've ever received. Never give in. What are you reading at the moment?

SPEAKER_02:

I'm actually rereading the Great Gatsby, because I liked it as a book anyway, and there's a lesson in there for all of us at the moment. Who should I invite next onto the podcast? Poppy Gustavuson.

SPEAKER_01:

How do you want to be remembered?

SPEAKER_02:

As someone that is dynamic but kind, thoughtful but pushes barriers, and nowhere would it ever be said, and then she gave up.

SPEAKER_01:

So, as the actionable futurist, I always like to understand what three actionable things should our audience do today to understand how technology such as yours can be a winning strategy for any business.

SPEAKER_02:

I thought about this long and hard, Andrew, and I took the title of your book, Be Curious. Be curious, because if you're not curious, you're gonna miss it. And that feeds back into what you said about why have big companies not done this because they're not curious. So I think be curious, be open-minded, and challenge and ask the stupidest question you can think of because it's usually the most important question out there.

SPEAKER_01:

Jill, this has been a fantastic discussion. How can we find out more about you and your work?

SPEAKER_02:

You can look at the Infrared Kinetics website and see all the videos of what we're doing. We're on LinkedIn as well, um, and and I'm on LinkedIn too. The Infrared Kinetics website is there and it's updated continuously. And we also we're in a lot of print media, and and that's on there as well, so you'll be able to read up on us and get in touch if you're interested, because we'd love to talk to anybody, and it doesn't matter how big or small you are, just reach out because we may be able to help.

SPEAKER_01:

Great to talk again and good to see you.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you, Andrew. And I want to say I'm really pleased that people are seeing you for what you are, and that the real groundbreaking disruptor that you are. I think that's why we get on actually.

SPEAKER_00:

That's very kind. Thanks very much, and see you soon. Bye. Thank you for listening to Digitally Curious. You can find all of our previous shows at digitallycurious.ai. Andrew's book, Digitally Curious, your simple guide to navigating the future of AI and beyond, is available at digitallycurious.ai. Until next time, we invite you to stay digitally curious.

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