I don’t think this is a smart idea but it was bound to happen sooner than later. Someone thought it was a bright idea to give an autonomous truck licence to drive. That’s right there is an Optimus Prime wanna-a-be rolling the streets and highways of Nevada. This is all legal and on the up and up. Gov. Brian Sandoval granted the license to the Freightliner Inspiration Truck. The truck is the first autonomous truck legalized to drive on public roads in the US. Even though the truck is packed with all kinds of loaded with cameras, radars, sensors and computers it won’t be completely self-driving. The truck must have a human driver behind the wheel at all times.
The system is not fully autonomous since there is a human there but the semi-autonomous truck can on its own maintain legal speed, staying in the selected lane, keeping a safe braking distance from other vehicles, and slowing or stopping the vehicle based on traffic and road conditions. While the truck is doing all that the driver can handle things like inventory, route planning and scheduling. While in most likely the driver will probably just go to sleep. The driver would have to focus for certain task such as exiting a highway, driving on local roads and docking to drop off deliveries. Before the truck was granted a license it had to drive over 10,000 miles on a circuit in Germany.
[Youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hA9SMaRVQ8]