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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...

A fleet of self-driving trucks rumbles across Europe Trucks "platooning" across the Netherlands. Credit: Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment Platooning in the U.S. still four to five years out By Lucas Mearian Computerworld | Apr 7, 2016 2:24 PM PT A caravan of about a dozen self-driving, semi-trailer trucks for the first time finished a trip across parts of Europe this week. The autonomous truck challenge was organized by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment and included rigs from six manufacturers, including Volvo, Daimler and Volkswagen subsidiary Scania. The convoy journeyed from manufacturing facilities in Belgium,...