Self-driving truck hauled 20 tons of butter cross country in three days

An autonomous truck technology startup says that one of their trucks made a cross country trek hauling perishable cargo in less than three days.

This week, California-based company Plus.ai announced that one of their self-driving trucks hauled 40,000 pounds of Land O Lakes butter from Tulare, California, to Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

Plus.ai says that the 2,800 mile hub-to-hub trip was completed in less than three days.

Plus.ai offered details about the cross-country journey:

The truck was equipped with Plus.ai’s advanced autonomous driving system which utilizes multimodal sensor fusion, deep learning visual algorithms, and simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM) technologies. The journey was an important milestone in validating the system’s ability to safely handle a wide range of weather and road conditions. The vehicle drove primarily in autonomous mode through the 2,800 miles across interstate 15 and interstate 70, passing through varied terrains and weather conditions. A safety driver was onboard at all times to monitor and assume control if needed, and a safety engineer was present to monitor system operations.

The company boasts that their self-driving truck technology was able to handle day and night driving, construction zones, multi-mile tunnels, elevation, and inclement weather.

“This cross-country freight run with Land O’Lakes shows the safety, efficiency and maturity of our autonomous trucks, which are already delivering freight for other partners several days a week,” said Shawn Kerrigan, COO and co-founder of Plus.ai. “Continued advances in our autonomous trucks will make it possible for these quick cross-country runs to be the norm in the future. We are excited to demonstrate what our technology can already achieve today while meeting rigorous autonomous driving safety and food transportation compliance standards.”