Do you know who you like to drink Espresso espresso? Not a white-collar, not a rich man, but a truck driver. Especially in the United States, after hundreds of kilometers of long-distance travel, the favorite of the truck driver is to go to the gas station to have a Double Espresso refreshing. But with Otto, they might be able to dump Espresso in their hands.
On October 25th, Uber's self-driving truck company Otto announced the completion of the world's first self-driving commercial freight service and released a live video of the road. The card carries 51744 cans of Budweiser beer, starting from Fort Collins, Colorado, passing through downtown Denver, and finally arriving in Colorado Springs for a full 120 miles (about 193 km).
The self-driving truck was converted from an 18-wheel semi-mounted Volvo truck equipped with two cameras for detecting road conditions, a lidar for generating a 3D modeling environment, and two for detecting obstacles. Infrared radar for vehicles, a GPS sensor for vehicle tracking. All of these devices add up to more than $30,000.
“I have to hurry and practice yoga,†Walt MarTIn joked. Walt was the driver of the self-driving cargo, when he was sitting on the sleeper behind the driver's seat to monitor the operation of the autopilot system. In addition to a short walk from the start and arrival, Walt's manpower must be driven. After entering the interstate, the truck travels autonomously at an average speed of 89 km/h, which takes about 2 hours.
Otto's autonomous driving technology focuses on high-speed sections, which do not require the handling of tricky road information such as pedestrians crossing the road or children riding bicycles. Unlike Tesla's Autopilot, Otto's autopilot system meets the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) autopilot grading "level 4", or "highly automated." Once the interstate highway is opened, it can really liberate the steering wheel and do other work at hand.
Thanks to the terrain of the United States and the well-connected road network, the self-driving truck is like a train moving on a virtual railway. The truck driver, just like the train driver, is only responsible for "inbound and outbound." Otto said in the statement: With the help of autonomous driving, the driver will have the opportunity to rest fully during the highway driving period, and the truck will continue to drive automatically and earn money for them.
“When people see that there is no one in the driver's seat, it should be understood that the truck must be safer and more fuel efficient.â€
Otto co-founder Lior Ron added that “94% of truck accident deaths are caused by human errorâ€, Otto's mission is to make the freight industry safer, and autonomous driving can also improve fuel efficiency by reducing unnecessary acceleration.
Automated driving may be more significant to the freight industry than civilian use. Trucks carry about 70% of the road traffic in the United States, and each year there are 10.5 billion tons of goods that are not being transported by enough drivers. According to the statistics of the American Truck Association, the current shortage of truck drivers has reached 48,000. By 2024, the gap will increase to 175,000.
James Sembrot, head of Budweiser, said that citizens of Colorado Springs would see the label on the beer can when they were drinking beer from a self-driving truck, "first delivered by self-driving truck."
Otto was founded in early 2016, and the start-up team is a former executive of Google's parent company Alphabet and some of Apple's and Tesla's former employees. They launched the prototype of the first self-driving truck in May. It was acquired by Uber for $680 million in August this year, when TK said that the combination of Otto and Uber would make them one of the world's top autopilot R&D teams. But he also stressed that Otto will remain independent and Uber will not participate in Otto's logistics program.
For the foreseeable future, the driver is still an important part of autonomous driving, but Otto can at least liberate the driver from the weight of driving, such as Walt wants to do yoga.
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