The tide of self-driving trucks is coming: manual remote monitoring, can pull over and park by itself

According to news on June 20, compared with the self-driving passenger cars that have not landed for a long time, commercial self-driving trucks are very likely to appear on American highways in the next few years. This technology makes more sense technically and economically, and may also affect the entire long-haul industry.

Driverless, self-driving trucks could be on the highways of the U.S. Sun Belt in the next few years. The truck will still have a steering wheel in the traditional sense, as well as oversized mirrors.They double as mounts for sensors such as in-vehicle radar, lidar, and camerasto help the truck better observe the surrounding traffic.

The truck wouldn’t be as smart or adaptable as a human, but it would have superhuman senses and no rest. What’s more, the truck won’t suffer from many of the flaws in self-driving technology. The inherent flaws of self-driving technology have led many companies to invest decades and tens of billions of dollars in the self-driving passenger vehicle industry, but repeatedly exceed the set realization deadline. Proponents of self-driving truck technology say self-driving trucks could hit the market sooner and start making money in commercial services.

Some companies said,They’ll be rolling out the first driverless trucks on U.S. highways by the end of next year. Aurora has partnered with FedEx and Werner Enterprises, while TuSimple has partnered with UPS and Ryder.

When self-driving trucks become widely used in transportation, it will have a major impact on how goods are transported, as well as on the companies and people involved in the process. For one, it could help alleviate a chronic shortage of drivers across the country. Drivers are retiring faster than newcomers are entering the industry, leading to a record-high 80,000 driver shortfall, according to the American Trucking Association.

Although fully autonomous driving under different conditions is still out of reach,But engineers are getting close to making it happen within constraintssuch as on the highway in clear weather.

All highways are inherently self-similar, says Aurora CEO Chris Urmson.

“That said, a small stretch of freeway in Texas looks very much like a small stretch of freeway in Phoenix or Minnesota,” Ulmsen explained. He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a Google executive who co-founded Aurora in 2017. Self-similarity is a good thing for AI technology that supports autonomous driving, because AI does a good job of dealing with things it has seen before, but not so good at adapting to new situations. Driving systems such as GM Super Cruise and Tesla Autopilot all have this problem more or less.

Another advantage of highways is that they are free from pedestrians, cyclists, animals and children running around compared to urban roads, and they tend to be well-marked and well-maintained.

Highways in the southwestern states generally have fine weather, and self-driving truck companies are currently testing self-driving systems with safety drivers to deliver real goods to real-world customers like FedEx and UPS.

In good weather, self-driving trucks can see farther than humans. The machine is never drowsy or distracted and can run 24 hours a day, only stopping when it runs out of fuel and maintenance.

Others are not convinced that self-driving trucks will be commercialized in the next few years, or that they will have a major impact anytime soon.

First, young companies trying to pioneer the technology must be able to maintain investor interest before they start turning a profit.

Aurora has said losses will continue through 2027. The company went public through a special purpose acquisition company in November 2021 and is currently trading at about a quarter of its $10 IPO price at the time of listing.

Aurora Chief Financial Officer Richard Tame said the company has ample cash and short-term financing.Enough to last until next year and the launch of the first self-driving truck in 2024. Aurora has said in public filings that it expects to eventually need to raise more capital.

Even if the startup’s trucks hit the road on schedule, it will take a while to make a real impact. Aurora’s chief product officer, Sterling Anderson, said the company will have “dozens” of driverless trucks on U.S. highways by the end of 2023.

Hou Xiaodi, CEO of Tucson Future, said,His company plans to operate a fully automated trucking commercial service in the U.S. market by the end of 2023. Meanwhile, a future Tucson spokesperson said the company plans to use self-driving trucks to deliver goods for Union Pacific.

But the dozens of self-driving trucks expected to hit the road by the end of 2023 are a drop in the bucket compared to the nearly 4 million large trucks on U.S. roads today.

Waymo, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, isn’t worried about funding and isn’t as aggressive in predicting when self-driving trucks will land. Waymo Via, its trucking unit, has yet to set a date for self-driving trucks, but has partnered with trucking company CH Robinson, fleet service operator Ryder, freight brokerage Uber Freight and truck maker Daimler Trucks.

There are many reasons for Waymo’s low profile, said Charlie Jatt, Waymo’s head of freight commercialization. An important issue is that there is no commercial truck ready for production with the redundant control systems required for autonomous driving systems.

If the power steering of a manned car fails, it is still possible for the driver to move it to the side of the road. But because there is no one in the cab, self-driving trucks must have backup steering, braking and electronic systems, Jett said. He added that the reason Waymo teamed up with Daimler Trucks was to cram all of these systems into a commercial truck that is produced in production.

In fact, in addition to the future of TuSimple, many industry insiders said in interviews that the possibility of system errors is the reason why self-driving trucks have not yet landed. A recent report from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) listed more than 100 accidents involving vehicles equipped with self-driving systems in the past year.

Still, the potential economic benefits of self-driving trucking technology are so great that many shippers and shipping companies are willing to accept them.

“What really surprised us was the relatively small additional cost of the technology required for self-driving trucks,” said Parth Vaishnav, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.

Labor costs typically account for 15% to 20% of truck operating costs. The study found that even adding $20,000 worth of hardware to a long-haul truck, such as installing sensors and a powerful onboard computer, can be quickly offset by a reduction in labor costs. Another economic impact is that, by law, truck drivers are required to stop and rest. This means that each truck priced at $100,000 to $200,000 will only be in real use 30 to 40 percent of the time. With 24-hour operation, truck utilization can be doubled or more.

“Even if other factors related to the truck increase the cost slightly, it may still be attractive,” Vashnaf added.

Waymo’s strategy is to develop the Waymo Driver, a basic system that includes software and custom sensors. Adjusted to user needs, the system can autonomously drive any vehicle, including trucks and taxis, Jett said. That likely means Waymo won’t be the first to deploy self-driving trucks, but once the company starts rolling out self-driving trucks, the business has the potential to spread faster than competitors, he added.

Regulation is also hardly an obstacle to the landing of self-driving trucks. While NHTSA has established guidelines and has been adopted by most states, in essence, these regulations simply require businesses to self-regulate. “A handful of states require specific certifications or bans, but all others are open to business,” Aurora’s Anderson said.

Don Burnette, CEO of another self-driving truck startup, Kodiak Robotics, said that self-driving truck companies like theirs are already on the road to prove their technology, which is why safe commercial autonomous truck deployment will only take a few days. year time.

In the long run, self-driving trucks could go from being a driver shortage solution to a driver employment killer. There are currently about 500,000 truck drivers in the United States, Washnaf said. Long-distance trucking is one of the heaviest jobs in the trucking industry, but it is also the highest paying job.

In his study, deploying self-driving trucks alone in states with better weather conditions could reduce the total time American long-haul truck drivers spend on the road by 10 percent. That would mean 30,000 to 40,000 jobs disappear, said Aniruddh Mohan, who works with Vashnaf.

Mohan added that as self-driving trucks become more capable and can do most of the long-distance driving in much of the U.S., it could eventually threaten nearly all drivers who do long-distance transportation.

But many in the industry claim that new jobs will emerge accordingly. Self-driving trucks will make trucking faster and cheaper, allowing more freight to be moved to self-driving trucks, and a lot of rail and even air transportation will be replaced.

All self-driving trucks will be remotely monitored by humans, able to pull over and send out distress signals. Beyond that, the specifics of human involvement may vary from company to company, such as whether the driver will drive the vehicle in places like city streets.

It’s worth noting that long-haul trucking jobs today are very different from the stable middle-class jobs that existed before the trucking industry was deregulated in the 1970s, said University of Pennsylvania trucking industry expert and member of Aurora’s industry advisory board. Steve Viscelli believes that self-driving trucks will continue the decades-long transformation of the industry.

“In a few years, we may see self-driving trucks hit the road. Over the next decade, autonomous trucks are likely to be adopted much faster than expected,” Veschelli said. “These trucks will have the same Trucks have different functions, so they’re not used like regular trucks, like 100 people with shovels don’t equate to an excavator.”