So we have heard of self-driving cars, but what about self-driving trucks? Well that’s a concept that Mercedes-Benz decided to demonstrate recently. Dubbed the Future Truck 2025, it’s basically a truck that is semi-able to drive itself, thus allowing the driver to perhaps take a break and maybe place some phone calls to friends and family, something that they might be missing especially during long-haul drives.
The trucks will be able to drive themselves thanks to a combination of radar and stereo cameras, which will help keep the truck on the road and not roll into a ditch somewhere. It will also be able to “talk” to other vehicles to determine if there might be upcoming construction or a traffic jam ahead, which hopefully it will be smart enough to avoid by calculating an alternative route.
According to Dr. Wolfgang Bernhard, a member of Daimler’s board of management, “The Future Truck 2025 is our response to the major challenges and opportunities associated with road freight transport in the future. With the Future Truck 2025, Daimler Trucks is once again highlighting its pioneering role in innovative technologies and is opening up a new era in truck transport.”
Unfortunately the Future Truck 2025 is far from road ready. One of the limitation is that the truck will require clear and consistent road markings that can be easily detected by its sensors and cameras, and that the laws might need changing. As the name implies, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz’s parent company) expects the Future Truck 2025 to be ready in the next decade or so, but in the meantime you can check out the video above to see the truck in action.
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