There’s supposed to be some big revolution happening on the part of the tech companies for trucking. That crazy amount of money is going to be contributed to the thousands upon thousands of new patents that have been filed past the last five years. Meanwhile, manned machins still have a stronghold on the future.

However, a study from Patent Forecast shows that while there was competition and innovation coming in from various tech companies, it’s impossible to track who’s on the advantage of having unmanned systems take precedence.

In which case, even after the rate of tech innovation increases, real world scenarios tend to dictate that a dedicated driver would be able to suffice in the climate.

Within the past four years, there has been a climb to self-driving. It has the frontrunners advancing to keep their past partnerships cohesive. And within the report itself, it states that all sorts of corporations are understanding that “an autonomous vehicle is too large for any one company to tackle alone. Instead, more companies have created strategic portfolios to complement their niche.”  This, according to the study, is the future.

Waymo currently is the front-runner for self-driving trucks to see their spotlight.

Meanwhile, TuSimple seems to be a likely competitor, when they shipped watermelons from Arizona to Oklahoma within 10 hours. Aurora, composed of former Uber assets (Advanced Technology Group,) may very well have some prominence. But the biggest disappointment has to be Nikola. After their founder was caught lying about their own self-driving capacity, the company has been losing credibility ever since. What a shame.

What is the story with self-driving trucks, anyway?

They have yet to design an infrastructure that can fully realize the points of contention within the human world. But once they put a safety bumperon there, the possibilities are endless. Self-driving will not be able to rely on connectivity but actually onboard processors. Therefore, accessing new information in real-time.