Daimler Truck North America and Waymo, Google parent Alphabet’s autonomous driving division, are set to kick off public testing of the first-ever redundant autonomous Class 8 trucking platform across Phoenix and Dallas in the next few weeks, calling it "an important step forward for the widespread deployment of autonomous trucks."
The two companies – who in October 2020 announced a global strategic partnership – have autonomy earmarked as a potential solution to several trucking-specific problems: safety (4,000 people died in large truck crashes in the U.S. in 2020), capacity (asset utilization rates are around 50% and about one-third of all driven miles are empty) and driver recruitment.
As of today, there is no production-ready, scalable, fully-redundant Class 8 truck platform, noted Boris Sofman, Waymo’s head of engineering for trucking. However, Waymo and DTNA are seeking to jointly develop the first-ever redundant, Level 4-ready truck platform powered by the Waymo Driver – a platform that includes ensuring compatibility with Waymo technology; aligning system requirements and specifications; testing and validating requirements and specifications; and implementing redundant features, such as steering and braking. The Waymo Driver itself is a hardware and software suite that includes radar, lidar and camera sensors.
While the base model for the platform is an off-the-rack Freightliner Cascadia, in order to provide a Waymo Driver-ready truck, DTNA executed more than 1,500 Waymo Functional Requirements, including modifications and/or additions to the truck's hardware and software.
The Waymo Driver, currently on its fifth generation, hauls everyday between north, central and south Texas, but there is a human safety driver in the truck. Many of the aforementioned modifications, according to Engineering Lead for Waymo’s OEM program Jason DiGrande, are to include layers of redundancy for added safety and capability when a human driver is eventually removed from the cab.
Level 4 is widely considered the first "driverless" level of autonomy. Often referred to as "high-driving automation," Level 4 autonomy requires no human interaction to operate a vehicle between two set points. With no human to take over in the event of a system failure, Sofman noted that redundancies become a critical part of vehicle operation.
Redundant braking and steering systems are designed to be fail-operational, ensuring lateral and longitudinal controllability to bring the vehicle to a safe state.
