Recently Waymo, the Alphabet-owned development team announced it was now venturing into autonomous trucking as well, just two weeks after UberFreight officially launched.
Waymo may not have intended for word to get out, but Buzzfeed had apparently seen a photograph of a vehicle and inquired as to its ownership. Waymo subsequently confirmed that it was in fact testing a truck, and said it was manually driving the semi on a public road for data collection purposes.
A Waymo spokesperson confirmed that the company is currently testing just one truck, “We’re taking our eight years of experience in building self-driving hardware and software and conducting a technical exploration into how our technology can integrate into a truck.”
Currently, Waymo is testing only one truck, focusing its efforts on data collection. Uber performed its first autonomous trucking delivery back in October 2016. The semi-trailer hauled a full load 120 miles down the highway with the driver only taking control on city streets.
Read the full story
