Self-driving truck

A self-driving truck, also known as an autonomous truck or robo-truck, is an application of self-driving technology aiming to create trucks that can operate without human input. Alongside light, medium, and heavy-duty trucks, many companies are developing self-driving technology in semi trucks to automate highway driving in the delivery process.

In September 2022, Guidehouse Insights listed Waymo, Aurora, TuSimple, Gatik, Plus, Kodiak Robotics, Daimler Truck, Einride, Locomation, and Embark Trucks (acquired by Applied Intuition) as the top 10 vendors in automated trucking. And, Transport Topics in November 2022 is listing fourteen companies to know about self-driving truck; Aurora, Waymo, TuSimple, Gatik, Locomation, Torc Robotics, Waabi, Einride, Plus, Embark, Kodiak Robotics, Robotic Research, Outrider and Pronto. In February 2024, this list was updated to reflect the exit of Waymo, TuSimple, Embark, and Locomation, as well as the addition of Stack AV.

Since 2022, daily testing occurs with human safety drivers behind the wheel, often performing commercial pilots for customers. Only in limited validation runs on test tracks have these autonomous trucking companies performed driverless operations where no human is located in the vehicle anymore. The reason is a self-imposed high acceptance bar for safe deployment of this technology.

In December 2024, Kodiak Robotics became the first company to launch commercial driverless operations of autonomous trucks in the United States. Operating on private lease roads in West Texas, the company provides a driver-as-a-service solution on customer-owned heavy-duty trucks. Self-driving trucks are expected to be deployed more widely on highways in the United States by 2027.

Several government agencies in the U.S. and Europe have announced new legislation surrounding the use of autonomous trucks. Some challenges of bringing self-driving trucks on public roads include, but are not limited to, road safety, the need for human drivers inside the vehicle, and the lack of specific regulations surrounding driverless vehicles.

As recorded in June 1995 in Popular Science Magazine, self-driving trucks were being developed for combat convoys, whereby only the lead truck would be driven by a human and the following trucks would rely on satellite navigation, an inertial guidance system and ground-speed sensors.

Komatsu made the earliest development in autonomous trucks testing a fleet of five Ultra Class trucks in Codelco Mine Radomiro Tomic in Chile in 2005 then in 2007 was installed the first working fleet in the mine Gabriela Mistral in Chile, also a Codelco property.

Lockheed Martin, with funding from the U.S. Army, developed an autonomous truck convoy system that uses a lead truck operated by a human driver with a number of trucks following autonomously. Developed as part of the Army's Autonomous Mobility Applique System (AMAS), the system consists of an autonomous driving package that, as of 2014^[update], has been installed on more than nine types of vehicles and has completed more than 55,000 hours of driving at speeds up to 64 km/h (40 mph). As of 2017^[update], the Army was planning to field 100–200 trucks as part of a rapid-fielding program.