Tag Archives: truck

AI making inroads in the trucking industry

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  AI in the transportation field is believed to grow its market size to $10.3 billion in next 10 years. Many companies in trucking industry are going in direction of being fully automated. Due to law changes in some states in the US, self-driving trucks are going to be able to drive in a group of two or more. Waymo – american company (leader in autonomous driving technology) contacted with german company Daimler (truck industry) and they decided to collaborate and deliver Level 4 (High Driving Automation) vehicles. That means trucks  will be able to react and intervene, if there is a dangerous situation on the road. However system does not require human interaction in most of the cases, it still has an option to manually override. For now Level 4 vehicles can only operate within urban area where average speed is 30mph. Waymo’s projects are now mostly focused on highway transportation and small freight carriers.

  Before this collaboration american company has been testing their technology in driverless cars in Arizona. They started a project with fully automated taxi service. Why so many people see it as the future? AI is commonly used in predicting and detecting traffic conditions. Because of the highways, trucks with AI technology will not only save money and lower emissions, but also increase efficiency. Without any human interactions needed, we can manage our deliveries in a simplier way. In other way adding AI reduces operational cost. We have to hire less people and the machines are working every day without a break. With programmed possible paths of pedestrian and cyclists, the possibility of an accident will decrease.

Unfortunately, current technology cannot replace humans entirely. Beside driving, truck drivers are also taking care of loading, inspection of the vehicles and customer service. Issue which I should have mentioned first, is very high costs of creation and more important – maintenance. If a company wants the system to constantly observe the traffic and improve itself based on patterns, the software and hardware need to be updated very often. Another con is that machines do not have emotions, so whether we want or not, we have to program them to choose in a fatal situation. For example we have to decide, if we are making the driver’s or the pedestrian’s life a priority. AI is the next step in logistics and transport development. There will always be pros and cons of every progressive thought, but we can not be intimidated by it. With using out of box thinking, this technology could become very useful to us and help us improve our skills in managing communication.

 

Implications of AI for the Trucking Industry

https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/28/waymo_daimler_ai/

https://hbr.org/2019/09/automation-isnt-about-to-make-truckers-obsolete

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First fully electric transport truck

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Mercedes-Benz Trucks; Urban eTruck; Elektro-Lkw; Weltpremiere; Elektromobilität; modulares Batteriekonzept; Verteilerverkehr ; Mercedes-Benz Trucks; Urban eTruck; Electro-Lkw; world premiere; electric mobility; modular battery concept; distribution;

 

Everybody know Mercedes have one of the best exclusive cars in the world but not many people know they just made first electric heavy urban transport truck.

Now both demand and supply for ecologically friendly electric cars are growing as new companies are joining the market showing their propositions. Tesla was the pioneer in the case of passenger though in the case of tracks Mercedes decided it will not give them the firs mover advantage and designed the first big rig of its kind.

The all-electric truck was presented in Stuttgart at the end of past month. It is especially designed for urban purposes. It is meant to be used at the final kilometers of transport shipping cycle. That is because of both: its advantages and disadvantages. The first being good acceleration and better energy efficiency when often stopping and accelerating (which is how it often looks in the cities full of traffic jams and lights). Moreover, in some places it might be used in city centers where petrol cars are forbidden to ride while hybrid and electric can (for example Warsaw). By use of electrical engine, Mercedes wants to reduce noise which is important when driving in cities (everybody knows how noisy they can be.)  The disadvantage of this truck, on the other hand, is its limited range of only 200 kilometers with total maximum weight of 26 tons.

The competition on this market will be for sure visible as two weeks ago Elon Mask, CEO of Tesla revealed that company is working on Semi transport track and is planning to present it as early as next year.

Mercedes-Benz is still waiting for close-up to start production for world scale. Daimler said the prices of batteries between 1997 and 2025 got 2.5 times smaller and batteries performance are expected to keep the same proportion.

Do you like idea of replacing all trucks in cities with those fully electric ones?

Sources:

http://www.designboom.com/technology/mercedes-benz-urban-etruck-first-completely-electric-truck-08-03-2016/

https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/27/mercedes-benz-shows-off-the-first-fully-electric-heavy-urban-transport-truck/

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