Though impressive advancements continue to hit the road, turns out on-highway autonomous truck development is more difficult than first believed according to Pronto AI Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Ognen Stojanovski.
Stojanovski recently spoke with Commercial Carrier Journal about the challenges of autonomous truck development, Pronto’s focus on off-highway and the outlook on taking self-driving tech to the road.
Stojanovski has definitely etched out his place in autonomous truck history. While working at the now-defunct Otto in October 2016 as the head of research and government policy, a Budweiser truck equipped with Otto’s self-driving technology set a then-record for completing the longest trip in an autonomous truck.
The 132-mile journey from Colorado Springs to Fort Collins, Colorado, was completed without human intervention, a big feat at the time that had many in the industry, including Stojanovski, feeling a little too optimistic about when self-driving trucks would be ready for prime time.
“At the end of the day, it's the predictability,” Stojanovski explailned. “I mean, there's been huge advances in AI, machine learning, whatever you want to label it, and we think we're at the forefront of that. But, still, the software can't generalize and predict as well as we, and I think many others, had hoped even a few years ago.”
[Related: Former trucking CEO joins autonomous truck startup]
