​Driverless Truck Makes First Shipment, Delivers Beer

Drones delivering pizzas, vegetables are now things of the past, but what Uber's Otto has done has laid the foundation of future. Or must we say that the foundation was set a long time back and Uber Otto has just reminded us of that. The company, famous for its cab rentals all over the world, has delivered 51,744 Budweiser beer cans using a truck. Nothing fancy in that apart from the fact that the truck had no driver. Yes, Uber's Otto has become the first agency in the world to deliver a consignment using driverless truck technology.

The feat becomes more remarkable as Google, Tesla, Apple and many other industry leaders have been busy conducting road tests of the technology. Uber had acquired tech start-up Otto and had partnered with Volvo in August 2016 for making its mark in the driverless vehicles segment.

The journey started from Fort Collins and ended at Colorado Springs via Downtown Denver. The press release by the company mentioned, "By using cameras, radar, and lidar sensors mounted on the vehicle to “see” the road, Otto’s system controlled the acceleration, braking, and steering of the truck to carry the beer exit-to-exit without any human intervention. In fact, our professional driver was out of the driver’s seat for the entire 120-mile journey down I-25, monitoring the self-driving system from the sleeper berth in the back."

The Future

Otto, a start-up established in 2016 making such big news in the driver-less truck technology, will surely shake the world up. One can expect major fireworks in terms of practically using driverless vehicles from the industry heavyweights. Google has been testing its driverless vehicles technology for a long time now whole Tesla has announced that it would add the self-driving hardware in all its vehicles. But whatever happens now, a first will always remain a first.