In recent years we’ve been hearing about some major companies as well as automobile manufacturers developing self-driving cars. Google, Apple, BMW, Ford and other carmakers are experimenting with it and have predicted that they will be available by 2020. Tesla has recently released its Autopilot feature, which is software that can self-drive a Tesla Model S. Tesla cautions that a driver should be present at the steering wheel should anything go wrong with the system.
Now comes word that there is a new truck company developing self-driving trucks.
Based in Silicon Valley in California, the name of the company is Ottomotto. A former member of Google’s autonomous car team and other Silicon Valley veterans are involved in the creation of the firm.
The company does not intend to throw away truck design altogether and start from scratch to construct self-driving trucks. Instead, it is producing sensors and creating software and other technologies that can be used in today’s trucks. The pieces are available in a self-driving kit that is designed to turn trucks that need drivers into self-driving trucks.
The self-driving technology is already being tested on a fleet of three Volvo research trucks that are driven in a controlled setting on highways within the United States. Otto asserts that it has performed one public demonstration so far.
There are about 40 members of the Otto staff that have experience working on self-driving vehicles with Alphabet, Google, Apple, and Tesla.
One of the founders of the company, Anthony Levandowski, who served Google and worked on its free mapping service, claims that the plan is to enhance the capabilities of the trucks they already have, collect safety data to demonstrate their benefits, and then bringing the technology to “…every corner of the U.S. highway system.”
Self-driving trucks could help to provide relief to overworked drivers who plant themselves in front of a steering wheel for long hauls that can take days of very little sleep.
There are great incentives for a company to create a robot truck fleet. Such a fleet can help stretch out the thing supply of long-haul drivers. According to the American Trucking Association, there are 50,000 workers who drive trucks in the United States.
Ottomotto is not the only company developing self-driving trucks. A company called Peloton Technology headquartered in Mountain View, California, is also working on the concept. Their technology features a lead truck driven by a professional driver leading a convoy of autonomous trucks. Volvo is a major investor in the company and has been a strong advocate of this platooning style fleet of self-driving trucks. The Swedish carmaker has performed three demonstrations of such convoys of two or three trucks each in Europe. The longest that a convoy has traveled is from Stockholm to Rotterdam in Sweden.
Drivers have been present in all the trucks and concentrate on the road, as laws require.
Mercedes-Benz is also working on a self-driving truck and plans to release to the commercial market in 2025.