Daimler Trucks
Daimler Trucks is a pioneer in autonomous trucks with its Mercedes-Benz and Freightliner and brands. Daimler Trucks in 2014 launched the Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 with autonomous driving function.
In 2015, Daimler introduced Highway Pilot in Germany. In 2016, Daimler participated in the European Truck Platooning Challenge with three connected, semi-autonomous Mercedes-Benz Actros.
The Freightliner Inspiration Truck is the first licensed autonomous commercial truck to operate on an open public highway in the United States. It was unveiled in 2015 during a ceremony at the Hoover Dam.
What would be accepted today by both drivers and trucking companies is driver assistance systems. Hardware to help with safe following, and especially, systems to help keep the speed safe as road conditions change, while alerting the drivers to conditions ahead. Reducing fatigue while improving driver awareness would be accepted by both sides of the issue. Who could argue with improving both safety and profits?
Here is another question, which is, how many different responses does the truck control computer have for any given situation, either actual or possible? The lack of the correct response is why the UBER car killed that woman in Florida. The car had only two choices and both were wrong! When the computer vision system noticed the woman next to the road it should have moved away, either into the next lane, or at least to the far edge of it’s own lane. That is what a smart human driver would do. . But it is certain that the computer only saw a clear lane and thus it was not in a position to avoid hitting the poor woman. If the car had been on the left edge of it’s lane it would have either missed her or just grazed her, but instead it saw no potential problem and so went on with it’s program of staying in the lane center. This is the intrinsic flaw in computer driven cars and there is no way to fix it. The best approach would be to stop wasting money before hundreds of folks die!