Posted on 12/11/2019 3:44:21 PM PST by Drango
A Silicon Valley startup has completed what appears to be the first commercial freight cross-country trip by an autonomous truck, which finished a 2,800-mile-run from Tulare, California to Quakertown, Pennsylvania for Land O’Lakes in under three days. The trip was smooth like butter, 40,000 pounds of it.
Plus.ai, a 3-year-old company in Cupertino, announced the milestone Tuesday. A safety driver was aboard the autonomous semi, ready to take the wheel if needed, along with a safety engineer who observed how things were going.
“We wanted to demonstrate the safety, reliability and maturity of our overall system,” said Shawn Kerrigan, co-founder and chief operating officer of the company, in an interview Monday. The company’s system uses cameras, radar and lidar — laser-based technology to help vehicles determine distance — and handled the different terrains and weather conditions such as rain and low visibility well, he said.
The truck, which traveled on interstates 15 and 70 right before Thanksgiving, had to take scheduled breaks but drove mostly autonomously. There were zero “disengagements,” or times the self-driving system had to be suspended because of a problem, Kerrigan said.
Plus.ai has been running freight every week for about a year, its COO said, but this is the first cross-country trip and partnership it has talked about publicly.
End of year is peak butter time, according to Land O’Lakes.
“To be able to address this peak demand with a fuel- and cost-effective freight transport solution will be tremendously valuable to our business,” said Yone Dewberry, the butter maker’s chief supply officer, in a statement.
How long will it be before self-driving trucks are delivering goods regularly across the nation’s highways? Kerrigan thinks it’s “a few years out.”
Dan Ives, managing director of equity research for Wedbush Securities, predicts there will be quite a few autonomous freight-delivery pilots in 2020 and 2021, with the beginning of a commercial rollout in 2022. Like other experts, he believes the trucking industry will be the first to adopt autonomous technology on a mass scale.
The timeline will depend on regulations, which vary state to state, he said.
About 10 to 15 companies nationwide are working on autonomous freight delivery, Ives said. That includes San Francisco-based self-driving truck startup Embark Trucks, which last year completed a five-day, 2,400-mile cross-country trip. But that truck carried no freight.
I don’t get this. Here in Arizona, we have these dopey fat sticks of butter that don’t fit in the butter keepers. I read the treason for that had to do with when the west tooled up butter production. Are they actually making normal sticks of butter and shipping them east, leaving us deprived?
That's the first thing that came to mind. Best movie song evah.
Is America great or what? Delivering beer, not butter. Not that there's anything wrong with butter, but..
They don’t make butter in PA?
“If there has to be a driver on board, then adopting self-driving trucks is kind of pointless, isn’t it?”
Yes, I think so too. However, I don’t see a problem with using technology to help the driver be safer (e.g. intervene when the driver falls asleep, or doesn’t recognize an impending disaster).
Eventually, none of us will be allow to drive anywhere we choose. They are really pushing this hard. I guess eventually, the camps will be the destination for many.
I only see a couple thousand cows in Lancaster and west of Harrisburg...
Made with pure Fukashima water, so it glows.
I am going to be really upset if one of these so-called “autonomous” semi’s crashes into me and my Triumph motorcycle. I am seriously going to sue them.
Did these geniuses ever hear of a railroad train? Also, who put the gas in this modern wonder? There’s no cure for stupid.
I don’t know about that.
may be a new market for the new AI sex robots
Why truck butter to Pennsylvania?
The dutch Amish falling behind?
Why not ship it on a train?
Why why why?
Oh “electric”.
New mousetraps aren’t always BETTER mousetraps.
Who fuels them up and bops the tires?
Land O Lakes is the only brand of butter we use. The box says the company is located in Arden Hills, Minnesota. Where the hell does California come in?
They are already pushing for NEW highways with dedicated lanes for their unmanned trucks.
Again, that’s what a flatbed train is.
Get ready to bend over and pay for big corporate to put people out of work in the name of “Savings”.
No trickle down or up about it.
“But can it drive from Atlanta to Texarkana, pick up 400 cases of Coors beer, and transport it back to Atlanta in 28 hours or less?”
Why would anyone want to transport Coors beer anywhere?
It may be contaminated with fecal matter if it originates in San Francisco.
Who fills the gas tank if there isn’t a safety driver on board? And if it has to take breaks, and there is a safety driver on board, what is the sense of having a self-driving truck to begin with?
The truck was delayed at a truck stop after it was solicited by a fembot.
I remember the days of elevator operators.
The HQ is in Minnesota. It doesn’t mean a single stick of butter comes from there...
“Land O’Lakes, Inc. is a member-owned agricultural cooperative based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburb of Arden Hills, Minnesota, United States,[2] focusing on the dairy industry. The cooperative has 1,959 direct producer-members, 751 member-cooperatives, and about 10,000 employees who process and distribute products for about 300,000 agricultural producers;[3] handling 12 billion pounds of milk annually.[4] It is ranked third on the National Cooperative Bank Co-op 100 list of mutuals and cooperatives.[5] The co-op is one of the largest producers of butter and cheese in the United States through its dairy foods business; serves producers, animal owners and their families through more than 4,700 local cooperatives, independent dealers and other large retailers through its Purina Animal Nutrition (Purina Mills) business; and delivers seed, crop protection products, agricultural services and agronomic insights to 1,300 locally owned and operated cooperative and independent agricultural retailers and their grower customers through its WinField United business.”
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