An artificial intelligence startup Plus.ai just shipped 40,000 pounds of butter 2,800 miles from California to Pennsylvania using self driving truck.
It completed FIRST EVER cross-country trip ‘primarily’ in autonomous mode, in less than three days. During its journey, this truck climbed 11,000 feet in elevation, crossed rainy and snowy roads and found its way winding Rockies roads.
This self driving truck has advanced autonomous driving system that make use of multimodal sensor fusion, deep learning visual algorithms and simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM) technologies.
Shawn Kerrigan, co-founder of Plus.ai, said, “This cross-country freight run with Land O’Lakes shows the safety, efficiency and maturity of our autonomous trucks, which are already delivering freight for other partners several days a week.
He added, “We wanted to demonstrate the safety, reliability and maturity of our overall system,”
In fact, a safety driver and engineer were on-board, but they never had to take over. It just made scheduled stops, no “disengagements,” or unforeseen problems came with the self-driving system.
Self-Driving Truck had full refrigerated cargo of Land O’Lakes items. It traveled on interstates 15 and 70 right before Thanksgiving. Around Thanksgiving time demand of butter increases every year.
Land O’Lakes butter chief supply officer Yone Dewberry said, “To be able to address this peak demand with a fuel- and cost-effective freight transport solution will be tremendously valuable to our business,”
