Self-driving tractor trailers are rumbling down Texas highways to haul cargo at night — a major step forward for the technology.
The autonomous 18-wheelers — which still carry a driver behind the wheel — have been making the roughly four-trip between Dallas and Houston to transport food and dairy products, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Aurora Innovation, a startup, said it was able to achieve driverless trucking after dark because of its LiDAR system, which casts laser beams to see items in 3D and measure the distance to those objects.
The system used in the Aurora Driver is able to identify objects in the dark as far away as the length of three football fields, the company said Wednesday.
That allows the trucks to spot pedestrians, other vehicles and debris on the road about 11 seconds quicker than a human driver.
The technology is a crucial component of self-driving cars from brands like Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volvo, as well as Waymo robotaxis, which have been operating around the clock in busy cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles for years.
Until recently, autonomous trucks have only operated on roads while it’s light out with good weather, fearful of risks that could arise amid more complex driving conditions.
But operators of the robo-trucks claim the LIDAR system is more reliable than human drivers, who could be sleepy and distracted behind the wheel after cross-country routes.
The nighttime capabilities are quite an accomplishment since “it’s even harder than it is during the daytime to be able to disambiguate, say, a person versus a piece of tire on a freeway,” Aurora CEO and co-founder Chris Urmson told the Journal.
Critics have argued that autonomous trucks come with steep risks, such as handling traffic, bad weather and unexpected blockages in the road.
“Maybe they are good for less populated areas,” truck driver Troy Turnham told the Journal.
“I’m not sure I would trust being around them when a severe storm hits, nor in the winter.”
Kodiak Robotics has also started operating driverless trucks at night in parts of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico.
Five of these trucks operate on leased roads, not highways, without drivers on board to deliver loads of sand for use in fracking.
The company also operates trucks in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Oklahoma City, but these vehicles have drivers on board at night.
Several tests were performed before the trucks were permitted to drive at night, including test-runs with mannequins on a track.
The use of the Aurora Driver has grown rapidly, completing more than 20,000 miles since it started on public roads in May across three trucks.
Now the company is testing a system between Phoenix and Fort Worth – a 16-hour route that usually requires two drivers.
There are federal laws in place to regulate how much time long-haul truckers can spend on the road, placing a maximum of 11 hours behind the wheel in a 14-hour period followed by a mandatory 10-hour break.
But proponents argue this could all change with autonomous trucks – allowing human drivers to take on shorter, less strenuous routes while self-driving trucks handle the long hauls, according to Richard Stocking, chief executive of Hirshback Motor Lines in Iowa.
Using autonomous trucks for these less attractive routes could win over younger workers who want more of a work-life balance with more predictable schedules, he added.
Human drivers could go home more often, “if not daily, several times a week,” Stocking said.
