OTTO Self Driving Trucks

SELFDRIVING TRUCKS!

Yes you heard it right, its TRUCKS not CARS!!!

A start-up named OTTO is American based self-driving technology company which was established in January 2016, later in the same year it was acquired by a transportation network company UBER, The co-founder Lior Ron told that there will be fleet of self-driving company in the early 2017

The image shows a truck has been self-driven with OTTO technology

Ottomotto LLC is the legal name, the founder Anthony Levandowski was working in Google on Google’s self-driving car project and the co-founder Lior Ron was product lead on Google maps team. The goal of the company is to use their technology in trucks in long distance transport allowing the driver take rest in back of the truck. This will in turn reduce the transportation time because there won’t be any stops

OTTO doesn’t manufacture trucks, instead it focuses on making hardware kits which can be installed really quickly in a truck, in service centers or factories. 

So far the company has converted five Volvo 780 semis with self-driving technology and testing them in interstate highways.

Let me move on to the WORKING 

It is similar to the technology used by Google and Nissan in their self-driving car, the truck will be equipped with a radar, camera and lidar.

The image  shows the arrangement of radar, camera and lidar in the truck

The radar in the front of the truck will detect the object and velocity of the object  and the lidar will detect the distance between the object and the truck by illuminating laser pulse light and measuring the reflected pulse with sensor and we come to the cameras in the trucks that is used to maintain lane discipline and take curve properly by using various image processing techniques .

Inside of the cabin is custom built with liquid cooled, a bread box sized micro-supercomputer. The computer is used to collect different data’s from the sensors and run through the guidance algorithms that adjust the breaking and steering commands according to the weight of the truck.

The drive by- wire box is used to turn the computer output signals into physical truck control signal. It controls the truck physically by using electromagnetic actuators mounted to the trucks mechanical steering, throttling and braking system. There are two big red buttons given in the cabin of the truck and they have named it as the BIG red buttons. By pressing that the truck can turn to manual driving, but it won’t be completely off the system is designed to yield at urgent tugs on the steering wheel or over pumping the pedals anyone  who is in the driver’s seat.

Okay let’s summarize with the three W factors

Who

A company named OTTO made this possible, the founders of this start up company is Lior Ron and Anthony Levandowsk, and now acquired by UBER.

Why

This technology was designed to reduce the accidents caused by trucks, because the truck drivers driving the truck without rest for long time will increase the risk of the driver falling asleep on the wheels

 How

This technology is similar to the technology used by Google and Nissan in self-driving car, it uses radar, camera and lidar to drive in autopilot mode.

 I think  there should be more vehicles with this technology on road 

What do you guys think ??

I will meet you with another interesting topic very soon, stay tuned to our blog THE FACT FACTORY for our further work until then its siddharth signing off

-          S. siddharth Kumar