A lot of work is happening in the trucking market to bring about big rigs that are capable of driving themselves. Many companies are working to make this happen and TuSimple is one of them. The United States Postal Service has now teamed up with TuSimple to ship mail in a two-week test of the former’s technology which allows trucks to drive themselves.
TuSimple will be shipping the mail for USPS as part of this test on five round trips between the distribution centers located in Phoenix, Arizona and Dallas, Texas. That’s a journey of nearly 1,000 miles. This test is going to include overnight driving as well.
These self-driving trucks won’t just be left loose on the highway without supervision. There’s always going to be a safety driver behind the wheel during the test who will be joined by an engineer as well.
The big rigs that the startup users are Navistar trucks and they’re kitted with TuSimple’s self-driving technology. It uses nine cameras to provide the car with the data it needs to make decisions in combination with the data from the LIDAR sensors. TuSimple strikes these deals with logistics companies to offset some of the costs of developing the self-driving technology. It has previously hauled cargo for 12 companies on similar test runs.
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