Plus.AI travel US with Autonomous trucks
Plus.AI was founded by a group of friends less than five years ago and they continue to plough a very deep furrow in the highly competitive world of autonomous trucks.
The company was at last year’s CES with one vehicle, this year they were back at CES with two tractor units, one was an International Sleeper cab and the other was a very interesting day cabbed Peterbilt which I believe is the first day cab to have level 4 autonomy fitted to it.
They all also demonstrated a fully integrated system on the day cab and then a research and development system which had most of the cameras, radar and lidar equipment mounted on a “shelf” above the cab windscreen ( windshield).
Despite the relatively small size compared to many of the large global players in the sector they have a breadth of “on the road” experience in the US and China where they have a working relationship with major truck manufacturer First Auto Works (FAW).
The company are concentrating on autonomous driving in every state in the US to try and gather data on all types of driving conditions from high sunshine states such as Florida to snow conditions in states such as Minnesota. They recently completed one of the longest journeys in level 4 going virtually from one coast of the states to the other, a 2800-mile route ending up in Pennsylvania.
According to Shawn Kerrigan one of the co-founders “We want to build a technology solution that is applicable across different weather, terrains, and driving scenarios. Testing our trucks’ readiness means we need to put them through stringent safety tests, on every highway in the country”.