Cover Story Lockered and Loaded by Bradley Berman With its innovative Transporter, AV startup Udelv rethinks the entire concept of parcel delivery. For most of its history, the autonomous-vehicle industry has focused on passenger transport, attempting to replace humans behind the wheel with a digital " driver. " The bulk of the industry's engineering resources continues to be aimed at core driving functions, such as perception, controls and localization. But this nearly singular focus on robotic taxi drivers ignores countless opportunities to automate other types of vehicle operators, most notably the e-commerce delivery person who recently left a package at your front door. The startup Udelv was founded in late 2016 to address that use case. Based in Burlingame, Calif., the company's engineering work began in March 2017. Udelv knows its delivery trucks need to traverse highways and byways safely, but that's a secondary function. Its raison d'etre is to automate the tasks Udelv's fresh approach to cargo-vehicle packaging is uncovered when the Transporter's side panels open. The prototype shown was built at Roush Industries in Michigan. 4 April 2022 AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE ENGINEERING Udelv