SAN DIEGO--Robot-trucking startup TuSimple, whose valuation hit $1.1 billion this year, has a contract to haul mail for the United States Postal Service in a paid trial that kicks off Tuesday morning, the federal agency’s first such project and a high-profile demonstration of on-highway autonomous technology.

The program runs for two weeks, during which three of San Diego-based TuSimple’s self-driving semis are to complete five roundtrips hauling trailers loaded with mail between USPS distribution facilities in Phoenix and Dallas, or more than 1,000 miles each way. Each truck will have a safety engineer and driver on board to monitor performance. The company is being paid commercial shipping rates but isn’t disclosing the value of the project.

Although Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo operates a modest robo-taxi service in suburban Phoenix, and companies including GM’s Cruise, Zoox, Uber and Lyft all plan to have on-demand, autonomous ride services, perfecting the technology to do that in tricky urban settings is likely to take longer than some advocates anticipated. By contrast, opportunities for AI-enabled systems for trucks that operate mainly on less complex highways–especially on long-haul routes where there’s a driver shortage–appear to be on a faster path to large-scale commercialization.

“It’s exciting to think that before many people will ride in a robo-taxi, their mail and packages may be carried in a self-driving truck,” said Xiaodi Hou, the computer scientist who founded TuSimple and is its president and chief technology officer. “Performing for the USPS on this pilot in this particular commercial corridor gives us specific-use cases to help us validate our system, and expedite the technological development and commercialization progress.”

For the past year, TuSimple has been hauling commercial loads in Arizona with a growing fleet of robotic Kenworth and Navistar trucks for commercial customers that it’s not naming. By next month the company plans to have a fleet of 50 semi-trucks and is targeting revenue from paid runs to reach $1 million a month in the second half of 2019. Each truck is loaded up with an elaborate vision system combing radar, laser lidar sensors and multiple digital cameras, including one capable of tracking vehicles and road conditions up to 1,000 meters ahead, and a high-powered computing system developed by Nvidia, a TuSimple investor.

In the USPS pilot, TuSimple is running its trucks for 22 hours for each roundtrip along the I-10, I-20 and I-30 highways, through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

The company isn’t the only startup focused on driverless trucks. Competitors include Waymo, which tested a small fleet in Atlanta last year, as well as fellow startups Embark Trucks, Ike, Starsky Robotics and Kodiak Robotics.

Along with its U.S. operations, concentrated in San Diego and Tucson, TuSimple also has a division in China that focuses on drayage operations at ports, using automated trucks to haul cargo containers to logistics facilities. That technology was also designed by Hou. (Source: Forbes)

Story Date: May 22, 2019