After Autonomous Taxis, Autonomous Trucks Will Operate Later This Year

Autonomous truck from Kodiak Robotics. (Doc. Kodiak.ai)

JAKARTA - In addition to focusing on environmentally friendly vehicles, automotive manufacturers are also competing to develop autonomous vehicle technology to facilitate future mobility. This innovation is not only for small passenger vehicles that already exist today but also for large-loaded vehicles such as trucks.

Startup companies such as Aurora Innovations, Kodiak Robotics, and Gatik AI, have gone through the development and testing stages of autonomous trucks that humans have not operated in recent years. This technology relies on a series of sensors and software.

"At the end of this year, we are preparing to start operating the trucks driverless," said Chris Urmson, CEO of Aurora Innovations.

Autonomous technology is currently considered to still have a high risk when operated which can cause accidents. However, the three companies expressed better autonomous technology readiness this year.

Autonomous cars in the past few months have indeed become controversial, as the Advocates for Highway, Auto Safety, and International Brotherhood of Teamsters associations have revealed. They are concerned about the possibility of a greater risk because the size and weight of the truck is greater, so more rules are needed in this regard.

However, these three startups say that this development is easier to do because trucks operate on fixed routes, and mostly on highways. Thus, its development will not be as difficult as autonomous taxis that have to deal with heavy traffic.

To support it, these three developer companies also show Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration records where a human-driven truck accident in 2021 will cause many fatal accidents involving 5,700 trucks. Meanwhile, autonomous trucks do not have data yet.

It should be noted, from the data on truck accidents above two-thirds of the total occurs when someone, animal, other vehicle, or other objects enter the truck lane suddenly and because of the heavy load and weight of the truck itself, braking efforts sometimes become in vain.

Then can autonomous truck technology minimize accidents like the ones above?