Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - February 2024 - 18

INTENSIFYING
PURSUIT
OF AUTONOMOUS TRUCKS
Daimler Truck and Torc have
established a clear roadmap
that brings SAE Level 4 trucks
to the U.S. market by 2027.
by Ryan Gehm
For the " middle-mile " use case between two freight hubs,
Torc's Virtual Driver takes over the entire dynamic driving
task in the autonomous-ready Freightliner Cascadia.
S
everal autonomous-truck startups faltered in
2023 (www.sae.org/news/2023/04/autonomous-trucking-hits-rocky-road).
Another blow
to the sector came in December, when
TuSimple laid off about 150 employees, or 75% of its
U.S. workforce, as it winds down operations in the
States. The company will focus its development and
deployment efforts to the Asia-Pacific region.
Few self-driving truck startups remain, among them
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Aurora Innovation
and Kodiak Robotics (www.sae.org/news/2023/06/
kodiak-autonomous-trucks), headquartered in
Mountain View, California.
Established OEMs such as Volvo's Autonomous
Solutions unit and Daimler Truck, however, continue to
view autonomous trucking as a transformative opportunity
to bolster the transportation industry. Those benefits
are expected in the next few years, according to
Joanna Buttler, Daimler Truck's head of Global
Autonomous Technology Group. Its goal is to bring SAE
Level 4 autonomous trucks to the U.S. market by 2027.
Buttler leads all aspects of the company's global
autonomous-technology strategy including strategic
partnerships. A partnership with Waymo took a hit in
July 2023 when the startup announced that it was
stepping back its autonomous-trucking development
to focus its efforts and investment on ride-hailing applications.
But Waymo's co-CEOs confirmed that it
would continue to advance a " redundant chassis " being
developed in collaboration with Daimler Truck
North America (DTNA).
18 February 2024
Buttler also oversees Daimler Truck's independent subsidiary Torc
Robotics, which is focused on developing SAE Level 4 autonomous technology.
In a December blog post, Buttler wrote that " in the not-too-distant
future, goods will be transported over hundreds of miles by a softwarecontrolled
truck, without a driver behind the steering wheel. " The targeted
use case is hub-to-hub highway driving, from which the loaded trailer is
recoupled to a human-operated truck for delivery to its final destination.
" Trying to deploy this technology in all segments, all at once, is not
feasible, " Buttler said. " Those who have tried, have pivoted to focus
and prioritize the deployment to a singular, initial use case. "
She noted that autonomous tech will help to compensate for the
driver shortage, which is expected to increase to 160,000 by 2030.
" Humans continue to play a critical part in the supply chain where
they matter the most - in the last-mile delivery; in overseeing and
managing the autonomous fleet; in the interaction with other humans;
and in decisions and tasks that require a high degree of emotional
intelligence, " Buttler wrote.
" Torc has been testing autonomous-ready Freightliner Cascadia
trucks in real-world applications with our freight customers for quite
some time now, " Buttler said, including a route from Phoenix, Arizona,
to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She anticipates an autonomous transport
network to be gradually built up in the Southwest, " followed with successive
expansion and eventually leading to the widespread deployment
of autonomous truck routes across the entire U.S. "
Market and growth opportunities
Daimler Truck and Torc began working together in 2019 to advance autonomous-truck
development, and the fruits of that collaboration have
come to bear in recent years. " Torc has demonstrated that its autonomous
driving software [Virtual Driver] can safely maneuver highways,
TRUCK & OFF-HIGHWAY ENGINEERING
DAIMLER TRUCK
http://www.sae.org/news/2023/04/autonomous-trucking-hits-rocky-road http://www.sae.org/news/2023/06/kodiak-autonomous-trucks
Truck & Off-Highway Engineering - February 2024

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