The first Freightliner Cascadia trucks have been receiving by Waymo Via its engineering team. It was developing precisely for its autonomous-tech Waymo Driver.
Freightliner Cascadia has Been in the Works
Waymo and Daimler Trucks North America announced they would work together last fall. The purpose was to build a redundant L4 Freightliner Cascadia built for level-4 autonomous readiness. In fact, this is a critical step toward the commercialization and the solid foundation of safe and responsible commercial autonomous trucking deployment, according to Waymo.
The Truck has Important Features To Deal with Unknown Circumstances
To handle the unexpected, the trucks are equipping with backup systems and multiple layers of redundancies. The parts include backup braking, steering, computing, and power. This was explaining by a Waymo spokesperson. So how it works in the event of the main computer failure, the trucks are equipping with a secondary computer that can bring the vehicle back to a safe stop. The company also uses a group of sensors, that include cameras together with radars and lidar to cut down on misclassification rates and that add redundancy.
The Challenges of Building in Redundant Safety Features and an L4-Capable Platform
“You really can’t necessarily order or easily build a truck with the redundant safety features. This would be for fully autonomous driving. Moreover, this includes redundant braking and steering,” Waymo explained. “Though, on the passenger car side, we have had to access multiple generations of vehicles with redundancy. On the truck side, this industry is not as far down this path. Therefore, to deal with this challenge, we are using our learnings and the methodical approaches from the passenger car side and work effectively with Daimler Trucks to develop an L4-capable platform.”
Waymo LCC is an American autonomous driving technology development company. It also develops driving technology for use in other vehicles, including delivery vans and Class 8 tractor-trailers for delivery and logistics.
