This story appears in the June 12 print edition of iTECH, a supplement to Transport Topics.
Automated driving technology holds the potential to bring revolutionary gains in safety and productivity to the trucking industry. But how far will automation go? And how quickly will it happen? No one really knows what the future holds, and many factors could help or hinder the advance of automation in trucking, but I do think it would be helpful to consider a projected timeline. So I’ll take a crack at it.
ClevengerIt appears that truck manufacturers and the new technology developers entering the industry will move forward on parallel paths, with the truck makers focusing first on advanced driver-assist technologies while the tech firms target self-driving and driverless capabilities.
It’s important to note that the large corporations that build and sell commercial vehicles today all continue to see the driver as indispensable to trucking for many years to come. They seem to view this as an evolution, not a revolution.
It will be up to the tech startups to change the conversation, and they’ll be trying to do just that in the coming years.
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Here’s what I see in the crystal ball:
• 2021: Truck makers begin to introduce more advanced driver-assist features, such as lane keeping assist with automated steering, traffic jam assist and platooning. Meanwhile, technology developers and a handful of pioneering shippers and carriers have begun very limited deployments of unmanned trucks on specific freight routes in close cooperation with government agencies. A small number of fleets now are implementing driverless yard moves.
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