Uber’s Self-Driving Semi-Truck Finishes First Delivery: 50,000 Cans of Budweiser
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Otto, Uber’s self-driving truck company, has gone on an historic beer run, successfully shipping 50,000 cans of Budweiser beer to the grateful residents of Colorado Springs, Colorado in the world’s first autonomous truck delivery.
The inaugural delivery was made in the wee hours of the morning on October 20, on an 18-wheeler equipped with $30,000 worth of Otto’s self-driving software and hardware. The Volvo big rig was initially driven by a human operator from an Anheuser-Busch depot to a weigh-in station in Fort Collins, Colorado, according to The Verge. From there, the truck drove itself 100 miles on the interstate to Colorado Springs, cruising at an average speed of 55 miles per hour, while the human driver lounged in the sleeper berth. Once it reached the city limits, the driver took over again and steered it to its final destination.
Otto, which was acquired last summer by Uber for $680 million, operates largely independently of its parent company. Rather than building self-driving big rigs from scratch, Otto focuses instead on outfitting them with the hardware and software necessary for Level 4 autonomy. The startup can take any truck with an automatic transmission and retrofit it with high-precision cameras for lane detection, LIDAR laser detection units, GPS sensors, and radars.
One major benefit of self-driving cars is that they can reduce fatal accidents, the vast majority of which are caused by human error. Autonomous cars are also more fuel-efficient drivers because they refrain from veering and accelerating unnecessarily. However, Otto’s technology only works on highways. Humans will still be needed to navigate urban streets, Wired reports, and all the tricky obstacles they present.
This journey will pave the way for the launch of Uber Freight, a commercial shipping service due to come out in the coming months. Uber also recently launched a self-driving taxi fleet in Pittsburgh.
