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Autonomous Trucks are Trucking Our Way!

On the one hand, the overly enthusiastic predictions for fully autonomous automobiles have, thus far, fallen somewhat behind schedule (sad face). On the other hand, it now looks like we will see fully autonomous trucks barreling down our interstate highways circa 2027 (happy face).

The idea of autonomous automobiles has been around for longer than most people might think. For example, the concept of self-driving cars was showcased at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York as part of General Motors’ “Futurama” exhibit. This vision included automated highways and predicted autonomous cars “within the next 20 years.”

As an aside, when Matt Groening and David X. Cohen created their animated series Futurama in 1999, they borrowed the name from the GM World’s Fair exhibit to reflect their show’s themes of futuristic technology and societal evolution.

In 2004, the U.S. Department of Defense held the first DARPA Grand Challenge, sparking predictions that fully autonomous vehicles would be widely available “within the next 10 to 20 years.” (Didn’t someone just say that? It’s like déjà vu all over again!)

And in 2015, whilst his attentions were still focused on advancing technology in the form of electric vehicles and spaceships, the Tony Stark of irrational tweets (a.k.a. Elon Musk) proudly pontificated that fully autonomous cars would be operational and common by 2020.

In a moment I’m going to talk about real-world autonomous trucks but—as is my wont—I feel a meandering aside heading our way. So, just to give you something to think about—a tempting teaser, as it were—the image below shows a real-world fully autonomous truck today.

A real-world fully autonomous truck (Source: Torc Robotics)

If the truth be told, autonomous automobiles do have a limited amount of market penetration today. For example, fully autonomous taxi services are currently operating in select US cities. Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet (Google’s parent company), offers its Waymo One service in cities such as Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. These services allow passengers to hail rides in vehicles operating without human drivers. While they are currently limited to specific areas, these services are gradually expanding their footprint, but we are still a long way from all new cars having fully autonomous capability.

As usual, the mere mention of autonomous cars and trucks has triggered a veritable torrent of thoughts in my poor old noggin. For example, American actor Dennis Weaver played several notable characters, including Marshal Matt Dillon’s deputy Chester Goode on the western Gunsmoke and Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud on the police drama McCloud. However, the Weaver role that really sticks in my mind is that of travelling salesman David Mann in the 1971 television film Duel. The whole movie centers around our mild-mannered hero being hassled by a dilapidated truck as he traverses the Mojave Desert. Although we do see fleeting glimpses of the truck’s driver (well, his arm and his boots), I always had the impression that it was the truck itself that was driving events (no pun intended).

I don’t think Christine, who was possessed by an evil spirit, counts as an autonomous car. On the other hand, I am reminded of Isaac Asimov’s 1953 short story Sally. Set in 2057 (which is the year I will be celebrating my 100th birthday), the only cars allowed on the road are autonomous vehicles that contain positronic brains. Things go pear-shaped when a car thief attempts to… but I don’t want to spoil things for you. I’m also reminded of the 1986 movie Maximum Overdrive, in which the Earth crosses the tail of a rogue comet causing previously inanimate machines—including cars and trucks—to spring to life. On the one hand, this is obviously tripe. On the other hand, after watching this film, it’s hard to visit a gas station without first scanning for emergency exits. 

OK, I’m back—by which I mean I’m finally ready to talk about the topic at hand. The reason for my meandering musings is that I recently heard from my old chum Dave Tokic, who was inquiring if I’d like to talk about Torc (well, about Torc Robotics). In particular, the fact that Torc Robotics is well on the way to meeting their goal of having fully autonomous trucks crisscrossing America by 2027.

It turns out that Dave is now VP of Corporate Development at Torc. I must admit that this took me by surprise because the last time we talked he was VP at Algolux. As you may recall, Algolux was paving the way in machine vision (see also my columns:  When Genetic Algorithms Meet Artificial Intelligence and Cloud-Based Genetic Algorithms and Computer Vision Applications and Another Huge Step Forward for Machine Vision). I particularly remember Dave showing me the image below.

AI-based machine vision detecting things in fog (Image source: Algolux)

Remembering that this was way back the mists (no pun intended) of time we used to call 2021, I must admit to being impressed. What we are talking about is an AI-based machine vision system that was spotting things a lot of people would miss or mistake for something else.

So, why did Dave feel moved to leave Algolux and join Torc Robotics? He didn’t. What happened was that Torc Robotics acquired Algolux in 2023. Well, that makes much more sense. But wait, there’s more, because the folks at Daimler Truck were so impressed that they made a majority investment in Torc Robotics in 2019. Now things are really starting to come together!

Our conversation got off to an interesting start. I commenced with one of my typical opening gambits: “How many people are there in Torc Robotics?” I inquired. “We haven’t disclosed that publicly,” Dave responded.

Dang, the conversational ball was back on my side of the court. “OK, what can you tell me about the software and hardware you are using to implement your autonomous trucks?” I asked. “We haven’t publicly disclosed our architecture thus far,” Dave replied.

Hmmm. Tricky. “So, what exactly can you tell me?” I said, and the conversational floodgates opened, but fear not, because I’m going to condense things into a crunchy nutshell as follows.

I now know that Torc Robotics has been around for close to 20 years. The Torc Robotics solution we are talking about here leverages Algolux’s industry-leading machine vision technology. On the sensor side, this solution involves a mixture of radar, lidar, and camera vision. In the case of navigation, GPS data is combined vision data and state-of-the-art inertial sensing technology.

Daimler Truck is the world’s largest commercial vehicle manufacturer, with over 35 main locations worldwide and approximately 100,000 employees. Daimler accounts for approximately 60% of the long-haul trucking market. The newest addition to Daimler’s Freightliner family of trucks is their Fifth Generation Cascadia. This boasts a fully redundant chassis, which means fully redundant control systems, fully redundant power nets, and fully redundant… well, everything, really, which makes it an ideal platform for fully autonomous trucking.

Now, that’s what I call an autonomous truck! (Source: Torc Robotics)

There’s some sort of industrial building a few hundred yards up the road from my office. The road is narrow and the access to their loading bay is less than optimal. I can’t tell you how many times traffic gets backed up while a truck driver desperately tries to reverse his vehicle into the entrance to this facility. I can’t see an autonomous truck faring any better. I presented this poser to Dave. “No problem,” he replied.

It turns out that Torc and Daimler are working with their customers on a hub-to-hub model, where each hub is located directly off an interstate highway on the outskirts of a town or city. In this scenario, the autonomous trucks will handle the 600-mile-plus long-haul stuff. When an autonomous truck arrives at the destination hub, its trailer will be unhitched, after which a human operated truck will take it to its final local destination. Meanwhile, a new trailer will be attached to the autonomous truck, which will immediately set off for its new remote destination.

So, where are we in this process? Dave started by reminding me how the typical embedded product lifecycle goes. It starts with a humongous amount of work with prototype (non-production) software running on prototype (non-production) hardware. This is followed by generating a production-intent solution, which is itself followed by productization.

Similarly, in the case of automotive applications, you start with the research and development (R&D) phase, then you move to the advanced engineering phase, and then you transition into the production phase. 

And this is where we find Torc Robotics. They’ve recently announced the successful validation of their “driver-out” autonomous truck capability, which was performed with the full production intent hardware on the chassis side from Daimler in conjunction with the full production intent autonomous hardware and software solution from Torc Robotics. Everything is now “all systems go” for the scheduled full production launch in 2027.

All I can say is that, as usual, we find ourselves living in interesting and exciting times. What say you? Do you have any thoughts you’d care to share on any of this?

2 thoughts on “Autonomous Trucks are Trucking Our Way!”

  1. For local city street driving (not Torc Robotics intended highway only use), self-driving vehicles should be required to pass the same written test and road test that human drivers are required to pass, to ensure adequate ability to negotiate with human drivers bicyclists and pedestrians on the street.

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