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.
3 days, CA to PA is about 800 miles a day. The “safety driver,” with nothing to do but “look out” must have been exhausted with that number of miles per day. Having crossed the country from TN to CA @ about 500 mi. per day, I know. This whole business of “self driving” vehicles just plain scares me. Thanks, but no thanks. It’s a recipe for slaughter. And, what happens if a radical Mudslime gets ahold of one of those weapons of potential mass murder??
[Who fuels them up and bops the tires?]
Ever since the Teamsters Union pulled freight off the railroad tracks where it belonged and stuck it all onto the big rigs riding the U.S. interstate system, Americans have been the losers. You can blame Eisenhower for that one.
I loved elevator operators. The guys in the building where I worked were always polite, knew people’s names and the floors where they got off. Even warned me occasionally if my boss had arrived in a rotten mood. That was back in LA. Many years ago....
When I traveled to NYC on business, I had a scare when my cab took off before I’d finished closing the door and caught my thumb in it. The elevator operator took one look and told me I had to see a doctor and suggested which one to see./...and he was right.
I’d like to see one go from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah. And can it drive on the backroads so it doesn’t get weighed.
Who I would eagerly f**k before any of the shrews I want to college with.
Thanks.
yes, many could be laid off.
[Who fuels them up and bops the tires?]
And he uses the back door so he doesn’t get laid. “Sorry”.
Before getting too excited, please realize that 95% of trucking jobs are not about long-haul terminal-to-terminal transportation. The main function of most Truck drivers is less about actually driving than managing, delivering, repositioning, customer communication, blocking and bracing of freight, Counting and verifying volumes, strapping freight, “oh, you need to place the larger skids on the left side of the warehouse next to the 2nd dumpster” etc etc etc etc..........
That’s what trucking is actually mostly about.
I assume the scheduled breaks were to keep within Fed rules for truck drivers and to recharge the truck.
This is impressive but I'm still distrustful of "self-driving" vehicles.
Haha! That’s ok, a lot of different things come to mind listening to that song.
“single human driver”
My thoughts are that it will end up using operators in different areas and the trucks will be handed off to the next operator.
Coloradans do to move it away.
Who pumped the fuel on pit stops along the way?
Anytime.
Good Soundtrack.
I even liked the crappy movie too.
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