Skip to content
07/02/2022
  • FB
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram

An open mind, an open question…

Primary Menu
  • About
    • Election Calendar
    • Recommended Books
  • COVID Tracker
  • Japan YT Stars!
    • Audrey&Kate: Dynamic Duo!
    • BabySaster: Lolita Guitar Project
    • Naomi Club: Comedian, Actress, Fashion Designer!
    • Perfume: Electro-pop Trio
    • Yoyoka: Drummer Extraordinaire!
  • Knowledgebase
  • Modern Art
  • Photos
  • Think on These Things
  • This is RUSH!
    • Rush Discography
    • RUSH Appreciation
    • RUSH Playlist
  • J-POP!
    • NOKKO – Hallelujah! (1992)
    • KEIZO NAKANISHI – Starting Over (1994)
  • Home
  • Science
  • No Safety Driver Here—Volvo’s New Driverless Truck Cuts the Cab
  • AI
  • Autonomous Vehicles
  • Science

No Safety Driver Here—Volvo’s New Driverless Truck Cuts the Cab

Singularity Hub 03/31/2019 775 words

Each time there’s a headline about driverless trucking technology, another piece is taken out of the old equation. First, an Uber/Otto truck’s safety driver went hands-off once the truck reached the highway (and said truck successfully delivered its valuable cargo of 50,000 beers). Then, Starsky Robotics announced its trucks would start making autonomous deliveries without a human in the vehicle at all.

Now, Volvo has taken the tech one step further. Its new trucks not only won’t have safety drivers, they won’t even have the option of putting safety drivers behind the wheel, because there is no wheel—and no cab, either.

Vera, as the technology’s been dubbed, was unveiled in September, and consists of a sort of flat-Tesla-like electric car with a standard trailer hookup. The vehicles are connected to a cloud service, which also connects them to each other and to a control center. The control center monitors the trucks’ positioning (they’re designed to locate their position to within centimeters), battery charge, load content, service requirements, and other variables. The driveline and battery pack used in the cars are the same as those Volvo uses in its existing electric trucks.

You won’t see these cruising down an interstate highway, though, or even down a local highway. Vera trucks are designed to be used on short, repetitive routes contained within limited areas—think shipping ports, industrial parks, or logistics hubs. They’re limited to slower speeds than normal cars or trucks, and will be able to operate 24/7. “We will see much higher delivery precision, as well as improved flexibility and productivity,” said Mikael Karlsson, VP of Autonomous Solutions at Volvo Trucks. “Today’s operations are often designed according to standard daytime work hours, but a solution like Vera opens up the possibility of continuous round-the-clock operation and a more optimal flow. This in turn can minimize stock piles and increase overall productivity.”

The trucks are sort of like bigger versions of Amazon’s Kiva robots, which scoot around the aisles of warehouses and fulfillment centers moving pallets between shelves and fetching goods to be shipped.

Pairing trucks like Vera with robots like Kiva makes for a fascinating future landscape of logistics and transport; cargo will be moved from docks to warehouses by a large, flat robot-on-wheels, then distributed throughout that warehouse by smaller, flat robots-on-wheels. To really see the automated process through to the end point, even smaller flat robots-on-wheels will be used to deliver peoples’ goods right to their front doors.

Sounds like a lot of robots and not a lot of humans, right? Anticipating its technology’s implication in the ongoing uproar over technological unemployment, Volvo has already made statements about its intentions to continue to employ humans alongside the driverless trucks. “I foresee that there will be an increased level of automation where it makes sense, such as for repetitive tasks. This in turn will drive prosperity and increase the need for truck drivers in other applications,” said Karlsson.

The end-to-end automation concept has already been put into practice in Caofeidian, a northern Chinese city that houses the world’s first fully autonomous harbor, aiming to be operational by the end of this year. Besides replacing human-driven trucks with autonomous ones (made by Chinese startup TuSimple), the port is using automated cranes and a coordinating central control system.

Besides Uber/Otto, Tesla, or Daimler, which are all working on driverless trucks with a more conventional design (meaning they still have a cab and look like you’d expect a truck to look), Volvo also has competition from a company called Einride. The Swedish startup’s electric, cabless T/Pod looks a lot like Vera, but has some fundamental differences. Rather than being tailored to short distances and high capacity, Einride’s trucks are meant for medium distance and capacity, like moving goods from a distribution center to a series of local stores.

Vera trucks are currently still in the development phase. But since their intended use is quite specific and limited (Karlsson noted “Vera is not intended to be a solution for everyone, everywhere”), the technology could likely be rolled out faster than its more general-use counterparts. Having cabless electric trucks take over short routes in closed environments would be one more baby step along the road to a driverless future—and a testament to the fact that self-driving technology will move into our lives and our jobs incrementally, ostensibly giving us the time we’ll need to adapt and adjust.

Image Credit: Volvo Trucks

By Vanessa Bates Ramirez

This article originally appeared on Singularity Hub, a publication of Singularity University.

Print to PDF
Tags: Autonomous Vehicles electric truck volvo

Continue Reading

Previous: To Be Ethical, AI Must Become Explainable. How Do We Get There?
Next: Why Hasn’t AI Mastered Language Translation?

Related Stories

I Saw Firsthand What It Takes to Keep COVID Out of Hong Kong. It Felt Like a Different Planet.
2,151 words
  • COVID-19
  • Health
  • Science

I Saw Firsthand What It Takes to Keep COVID Out of Hong Kong. It Felt Like a Different Planet.

01/06/2022
Could There be Life on Jupiter’s Moons?
1,114 words
  • Biology
  • Science
  • Space

Could There be Life on Jupiter’s Moons?

09/23/2021
Antifreeze Fish Inspire New Cryoprotectants for Human Cells and Tissues
1,074 words
  • Biology
  • Future Tech
  • Science

Antifreeze Fish Inspire New Cryoprotectants for Human Cells and Tissues

09/23/2021

Archives

<<
2022
  • 2022
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
▼
>>
Jan7 Posts
Feb13 Posts
Mar0 Posts
Apr3 Posts
May2 Posts
Jun1 Post
Jul0 Posts
Aug0 Posts
Sep0 Posts
Oct0 Posts
Nov0 Posts
Dec0 Posts
Jan5 Posts
Feb1 Post
Mar1 Post
Apr0 Posts
May9 Posts
Jun26 Posts
Jul1 Post
Aug0 Posts
Sep9 Posts
Oct2 Posts
Nov1 Post
Dec1 Post
Jan8 Posts
Feb16 Posts
Mar11 Posts
Apr5 Posts
May34 Posts
Jun22 Posts
Jul11 Posts
Aug16 Posts
Sep16 Posts
Oct16 Posts
Nov14 Posts
Dec4 Posts
Jan0 Posts
Feb1 Post
Mar7 Posts
Apr11 Posts
May12 Posts
Jun7 Posts
Jul1 Post
Aug6 Posts
Sep0 Posts
Oct2 Posts
Nov6 Posts
Dec0 Posts

You may have missed

How to Add “Buy Now Pay Later” Payment Plans to WordPress
1,383 words
  • Internet
  • Technology
  • WordPress

How to Add “Buy Now Pay Later” Payment Plans to WordPress

06/28/2022
Bottling the Sun
3,071 words
  • Climate Change
  • Energy
  • Future Tech

Bottling the Sun

05/31/2022
The [Republican] Party Is Not Savable
Length: 15:03
  • Feature Videos

The [Republican] Party Is Not Savable

05/23/2022
How to Install and Configure Python on a Hosted Server
1,146 words
  • PDF
  • Technology
  • Web/Dev

How to Install and Configure Python on a Hosted Server

04/24/2022
  • FB
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
Copyright © All rights reserved. | BGMusic by Spyro Gyra - Rites of Summer.