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Tag: driverless

  • Starsky Robotics Launching Fully Autonomous Long-Haul Trucks in Florida

    Starsky Robotics Launching Fully Autonomous Long-Haul Trucks in Florida

    “We are now gearing up to take the person completely out of the cab on public roads in the state of Florida,” says Starsky Robotics CEO Stefan Seltz-Axmacher. “We’ve been testing on Florida roads with people in the cabs for a couple of years. We are starting off in the easiest conditions, in good weather, and with good lighting. In time, we will start driving in light rain and at night. But to start off we will be focusing on the daytime.”

    Actual Driverless Truck — With No Passenger — Recently On the Road in Florida Test

    Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, CEO of Starsky Robotics, discusses their imminent plans to launch fully autonomous driverless long-haul trucks in Florida in an interview on Fox Business:

    Gearing Up To Take the Person Completely Out Of the Cab

    We’ve been testing on Florida roads with people in the cabs for a couple of years. We are now gearing up to take the person completely out of the cab on public roads in the state of Florida. We are starting off in the easiest conditions, in good weather, and with good lighting. In time, we will start driving in light rain and at night. All of these conditions are within our operational design domains. We see different areas, different things that are hard, and things that are easy. But to start off we will be focusing on the daytime.

    What’s interesting about long-haul trucks is frequently they just drive between different distribution centers which themselves are in industrial areas. That’s where we are focusing on. We are not driving in downtown Miami or mid-town Manhatten. We are driving in places that are slightly more rural between warehouses that are immediately next to the highway. We will be doing broader rollouts next year but we will start doing initial road unmanned tests later this year. We will make sure the local authorities know (which roads we will be driving on) and then we will let the public know afterward.

    Starsky Robotics Speed Record For Unmanned Truck in Florida

    We Are Building Uber Drivers

    We actually operate as a carrier ourselves. If you think about Uber, we are not building Uber or Lyft and we are not building Toyota Priuses. We are building Uber drivers. On the Uber and Lyft side, we are working with companies like C.H. Robinson and Schneider who are then selling our capacities to shippers. So if you can think of a large CPG we’ve probably hauled freight for them. We are building the software but we are also operating the trucks themselves.

    Warning other drivers that a truck is self-driving is actually kind of an open question. The issue is, and this is a thing that we’ve seen in regular tests with a person in the cab, that we will have a lot of people driving next to us and see that there is a bunch of cameras (that get distracted). It seems like that if we had signs (saying that the truck is self-driving) that in itself may cause an issue.

    Starsky Robotics Launching Fully Autonomous Long-Haul Truck in Florida
  • Nevada Developing Driverless Car Regulations

    Nevada Developing Driverless Car Regulations

    Nevada has resumed putting laws into place that will allow companies to begin testing self-driving vehicles. Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles Director Bruce Breslow says the DMV is now developing new licensing procedures, and the state’s legislative commission approved moving forth with new regulations on Wednesday. Last June, Nevada had began laying the groundwork for autonomous car regulations, and in the meantime has had to align this ruling with safety, insurance, law enforcement and licensing concerns.

    Driverless cars in Nevada will initially have red license plates during testing phases, and once they are deemed ready to just cruise, the plates will be green. It is assumed that any drivers first noticing a car without someone at the wheel might benefit from this sort of warning and explanation. A while back, a Google-powered Prius was involved in a 5-car fender bender, even though Google responded to the incident as being human error. Still, so far the test cars have driven themselves roughly 140,000 miles with limited human interaction, without getting distracted, sleepy or intoxicated. “All of it is amazing,” according to Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval. “It accounts for all the safety issues, It even tells you when a crosswalk is coming up,” he goes on to say.

    Still, Nevada’s new driverless car legislation, called Assembly Bill No. 511, merely states that the government will continue to organize regulations on the matter. It might be a long while before the cars actually hit the public roads.