LOGISTICS TRANSPORTATION REVIEW8 JULY 2023OPINIONIN MYBy Jefferson Hammann, Vice President, Enterprise Transportation, The Pasha GroupI was recently returning to Dallas-Fort Worth on a flight from Baltimore when the captain advised all passengers to return to their seats and buckle in due to weather-related turbulence ahead. I paused in thought, considering the controls of the plane ­ would the pilot assume control from autopilot, or maintain course, and in which mode would I feel more assured in safe operations? Up until two years ago, prior to a visit with TuSimple Holdings, Inc. in Tucson, Arizona, I would not have given flight operations a second thought. But in that Tucson visit, a long background in fleet transportation and technology compelled me to take advantage of the opportunity to experience autonomous commercial driving first-hand during a test run; though we were in autonomous mode, an experienced driver remained behind the wheel, in the event of the need for human control. Fast forward to December 22, 2021, this same company made history by successfully conducting the first L4 "driver out" autonomous commercial truck operation, completing an 80-mile nighttime delivery from Tucson to Phoenix, without a driver behind the wheel. While autonomous operations are quickly advancing in trucking, most of us do not consciously realize that at minimum, we are all passive users and involuntary adapters to autonomous transportation. You are already a consumer of autonomous operations, both passively and actively. Whether you are a regular or recent commercial air passenger (passive) or drive a recent automobile with such features as lane assist, automatic braking, and adaptive cruise control (active), we are each engaged daily in autonomous driving activities. Even without such features in your car, your actions, and their impact on vehicles around you with such autonomous features, are inseparable. While autonomy has long been present in commercial aviation, the advancement of autonomous ground transportation is naturally, and quickly, following. Multiple companies, working alone as well as with major transportation carriers and retailers, are actively involved in autonomous applications across all segments of delivery. Many automobile manufacturers comprise a portion of these efforts, further providing the advantages of autonomy directly to consumers of their personal vehicles. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) defines six levels of autonomy from Level 0 (no automation) to Level 5 (full automation). While TuSimple (and others) proved the application of L4 and L5, L2 is commonplace with personal vehicles, and L3, with L4 right behind it, is currently within consumer grasp. Autonomy solves multiple supply chain problems, including truck transportation. One does not need to be directly involved in the transportation industry to be aware that truck driver shortages remain a considerable concern for carriers, retailers, manufacturers, and others alike. News stories are commonplace, as the consumer is ultimately impacted. Trucking "drives" the economy, touching well north of 80% of products U.S. consumers purchase. While fuel costs directly contribute to the cost of goods (and alternative fuels and power cells are already a well-publicized transportation disruptor), driver labor remains another major contributing challenge. Multiple autonomous vehicle companies seek to solve this problem, predominantly in middle and last mile segments. Their algorithms are proprietary, including such technology applications as radar, lidar, cameras, and mapping; these are applications that "see" farther and in more directions than the human eye, and enact driving decisions much faster than human action and reaction. With such advanced features, as well as the absence of D.O.T. logging requirements with the associated driver labor, the need to advance autonomous trucking is impossible to ignore.AUTONOMOUS TRUCKING, A NEEDED "DISRUPTION" ON THE ROADJefferson Hammann
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