Two autonomous vehicles recently gave us a taste of the future. A large one drove coast-to-coast with perishable goods, while a small one's prepping for grocery deliveries in the U.S.' fourth largest city.
Spreading butter from sea to shining sea
An autonomous truck hauled 40,000 pounds of Land O’Lakes butter on a 2,800-mile trip between Tulare, CA, and Quakertown, PA. Plus.ai, the Silicon Valley startup involved, says it's the first cross-country commercial freight run with a self-driving truck.
The nitty gritty: Plus.ai says its trucks have Level 4 autonomy, meaning they can drive without human intervention in most settings. The company's butter bot "drove primarily in autonomous mode" with zero disengagements, meaning its system never had to hand back control to a safety driver.
Bringing groceries to the 'burbs
City bots are also gearing up for commercial work. Nuro and Walmart announced they're launching a last-mile grocery delivery service in Houston, TX.
- Nuro, you may recall, has raised over $1 billion to develop driverless robotic cars.
- Walmart, you may have heard, is a retailer scaling on-demand delivery services (including driverless pilots).
In the coming months, Nuro will use its new robotic vehicle, the R2, and retrofitted autonomous Priuses to deliver Walmart groceries to customers who opt in to the service. Since it’s designed for urban deliveries, the R2 is smaller and slower than the average driverless vehicle.
The goods stuff
Transporting goods is a sweet spot for driverless vehicles. These operations are less risky and often already restricted to certain roads, like interstate highways and low-speed neighborhood roads. Plus, the technology plugs in nicely to the back-end of our sprawling e-commerce ecosystem.
Back in July, Nuro cofounder Dave Ferguson told me, "We see goods transportation as one application that enables us to constrain autonomy problem[s]."
+ While we're here: Mercedes and auto supplier Bosch are deploying an autonomous taxi service (for people, not butter) in San Jose.
"application" - Google News
December 11, 2019 at 10:24PM
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Autonomous Vehicles Find Application in Commercial Uses - Morning Brew
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