Transport under an autonomous control has been considered as one of the key priorities of the technology sector for several years. World-famous companies such as “Apple”, “Google”, or “Tesla” – the leader in electric car manufacturing, are focusing their attention on this technology to bring it to the market as early as possible. However, experts believe that this technology will be soon available to the logistics and cargo transportation sector, earlier than to ordinary consumers.
The fastest progress in developing this technology is demonstrated by “Uber”, the transport sharing company, that is the owner of “OTTO”, one of the leaders in the autonomous truck market. Last October, “OTTO” truck successfully transported commercial cargo for the first time in history. The transportation took place in the US state of Colorado and, according to the company’s press representative, it was carried out without significant human intervention. But does this mean that this technology is already prepared for the market?
Autonomous cargo transportation programs are still in their early stages of development, and we will have to wait for a long time for their appearance on the market. The latter tests have shown the reliability of the system on highways, but it is still unstable on busy city streets and therefore requires driver intervention. However, taking into account the pace of development of current technologies, this system shortage is likely to be quickly eliminated. A much larger barrier is the legal factors that would open the way for the wide use of this system.
“We have to prove the reliability of this system and deliver the relevant data to legal organizations that have to provide their own verdict after analyzing the information, and this may take longer than the development of the technology itself”, – that is what Elon Musk, the founder of “Tesla”, says about the automatically controlled means of transport.
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