Autonomous Vehicles Are Others Ready to Share the Road With Them?

Autonomous Vehicles Are Almost Ready, but Are Others Ready to Share the Road With Them?

Not long ago, the idea of self-driving cars and trucks seemed like something out of “The Jetsons,” the iconic 1960s cartoon TV series. But, fast forward to today, and there’s no doubt about it — autonomous vehicles are on the move. The four manufacturers that dominate the U.S. market for long-haul trucks are taking driverless vehicles seriously. Each has partnered with leading developers of self-driving vehicles: Daimler with Alphabet’s Waymo; Navistar with tuSimple Holdings; and Volvo and Paccar with Aurora Innovations, a startup founded by former executives from Waymo, Tesla and Uber.

Many companies have pushed back progress and release dates due to the pandemic, but there have been trials of these self-driving vehicles taking place in the trucking industry for a while now.

In 2019, for example, NDFA member Land O’Lakes moved 40,000 pounds of butter 2,800 miles from Quakertown, Pennsylvania, to Tulare, California with an autonomous tractor trailer. It took three days, and the experiment included only one vehicle hauling the popular dairy product, but it was, according to the butter maker, the first cross country commercial freight trip made by a self-driving truck

According to Land O’Lakes, the truck was equipped with Plus.ai’s advanced autonomous driving system, which uses multimodel sensor fusion, deep learning visual algorithms and simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM) technologies. The vehicle drove night and day on interstates through various terrains and weather conditions, construction, tunnels and other obstacles typical of a traditional haul made with a driver behind the wheel. A safety driver was onboard as a precaution, and a safety engineer was also present to monitor system operations, but essentially the truck was driving on its own.

In a news release, Shawn Kerrigan, COO and co-founder of Plus.ai, said, “This cross-country freight run with Land O’Lakes shows the safety, efficiency and maturity of our autonomous trucks, which are already delivering freight for other partners several days a week. Continued advances in our autonomous trucks will make it possible for these quick, cross-country runs to be the norm of the future. We are excited to demonstrate what our technology can