Self-driving trucks from Pittsburgh deliver food to needy in Ohio, Michigan
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Two self-driving trucks delivered more than 40,000 pounds of food last week from the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank to needy families in Toledo, Ohio.
The delivery was part of a test drive featuring two human-guided, self-driving trucks produced by Locomation, an autonomous convoying startup located on Pittsburgh’s North Side. Locomation’s first product in an upcoming series is the Autonomous Relay Convoy which enables one driver to steer a lead truck while a follower truck works in tandem, simply following the leader.
The driver of the second truck can relax with hands off the wheel while a fully autonomous driving system does the steering. The technology was developed by autonomy experts at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center with help from trucking industry veterans.
Locomation employs specialists in robotics technology, safety and artificial intelligence along with experienced trucking industry executives.
“The main goal was to actually experiment with running this autonomous convoy system through multiple states so we could understand how it will look in real life – what kind of coordination is required etc.,” said Locomation CEO and co-founder Cetin Mericli. “And of course doing it by carrying food from the food bank adds a purpose to this experimentation.”
Locomation initiated the collaboration with the Greater Pittsburgh food bank after helping the organization meet the demand for increased food distributions when the covid-19 crisis began.
“When they were helping us during our initial response to the pandemic, they were not utilizing their automated system. They were using drivers and providing their trailers at no cost to us,” said Justin Lee, Chief Operating Officer for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. “They’ve supported us so much throughout this past year and this was a way for us to support them back.
“It was their effort with what they were trying to prove with their technology and they wanted to have a charitable impact with this test run. They could have sent it up there empty to show that their technology worked but their goal is to use their technology for good so we were happy to partner with them on this.”
The pilot program is a collaboration between Locomation and the SmartBelt Coalition, a multi-state group of transportation agencies and research and academic institutions.
As part of last week’s demonstration, the autonomous trucks completed several routes through each of three states (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio) including the one that started at the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank and delivered food to families in need in Toledo. The Toledo Food Bank and Forgotten Harvest Food Bank in Oak Park, Mich. also participated in food deliveries.
Locomation’s autonomous system is designed for driving on interstates, said Mericli and since the system is still being tested it won’t be left unattended for the foreseeable future. However, he would like to see it become completely driverless eventually.
“It is way into the future,” Mericli said. “We’ve done a lot of autonomous vehicle development for the U.S. military and commercial clients. So, we really understand how difficult it is. That’s why we are going with a more phased approach to autonomy.”