INCOMING CARGO
ON TRACK FOR DRIVERLESS
TRUCKS The chairman of the International Truck of the Year jury, Gianenrico Griffini, chats with Michael Fleming, president and CEO of Torc Robotics, and Peter Schmidt, head of autonomous technology group at Daimler Trucks, about the developments in autonomous trucks stemming from the partnership between the two companies.
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ince acquiring a majority stake in Torc Robotics in 2019, Daimler Truck has made significant progress in turning autonomous trucks from an idea into reality. The companies have the longest autonomous driver technology and truck OEM partnership in
the industry and have been safely and reliably testing a fleet of autonomous trucks on public roads. The testing and demonstrating of its Level-4 autonomous trucks in more complex scenarios – such as ramps and turns at controlled intersections – are
well underway. In April, Torc announced a technology and development centre in Stuttgart, Germany, to support the ongoing development in the US. As a next step, Torc is now cooperating with leading US logistics companies to further develop real-world applications for autonomous trucking. It seems Daimler Truck is getting on well with its 2019 goal of having Level-4 autonomous trucks on the road within a decade. In an interview from October 2019, you said you were in the phase of testing class-8
autonomous driving on the public road. What stage are you currently working in? What results have you achieved so far? MF: Since we last met at the North American Commercial Vehicle Show in Atlanta in 2019, we have been safely testing a fleet of autonomous trucks daily on public roads in the US. We are developing autonomous truck technology to navigate for long-haul, hub-to-hub transport – our target use case. Typical driving scenarios such as lane changes and complex merges have been tested intensively
