Just a day after the lawsuit episode of Alphabet’s Waymo and Uber regarding the stealth of self driving truck technology, the escalating autonomous vehicle industry is welcoming a fresh self-driving truck startup.
Embark, which was founded in 2016 at San Mateo, California, has now made an official announcement and has unveiled its self driving truck technologies after a long period of covert development. Also, do not confuse this Embark with the public transit startup with the same name which was acquired by Apple in 2013.
Embark has constructed a highway autopilot system which is expected to become the truck’s “central cortex.” And like any other self-driving vehicle, the company also relies on the combination of sensors, radars, and cameras for sensing the surroundings and avoiding accidents. They are also using machine learning in the trucks so that the driving improves over time.
Embark’s co-founder and CEO Alex Rodrigues says;
Analyzing terabyte upon terabyte of real-world data, Embark’s DNNs (Deep Neural Networks) have learned how to see through glare, fog, and darkness on their own. We’ve programmed them with a set of rules to help safely navigate most situations, how to safely learn from the unexpected, and how to apply that experience to new situations going forward.
Embark has the target of launching 100 percent self-driving trucks on roads, especially long stretched highways. It wants to relieve the truck drivers from the hours of fatigue and boredom which prevents them from focusing on anything but the road. When the truck approaches a city or town, Embark notifies the driver and transfers the control to him. The technology may also prove helpful in areas having a shortage of drivers, by making the available drivers spend more time on the road.
Rodrigues says;
The American Transportation Research Institute estimates there is currently a shortage of 100,000 truck drivers in the industry, which is poised to only get worse as baby boomer drivers — the bulk of the industry’s workforce — retire over the next decade. Embark’s goal is to increase productivity per driver and prevent the shortage from becoming a crisis.
For vehicles to maneuver properly at a high speed and through bad weather conditions, it is necessary that the autonomous drives are equipped with high resolution cameras and high-end sensors, which is the basic reason for requiring heavy investment in this area. Only last week, TetraVue bagged an investment of $10 million from Samsung, Foxconn and others to provide self-driving vehicles with ultra high-resolution 3D image-capturing smarts.
Embark hasn’t revealed the amount of funding it has received so far, however, it said that it has the support of Maven Ventures, “with some of Silicon Valley’s most distinguished angel investors” on board. Embark also mentioned that they are hiring talents from SpaceX, Audi’s self-driving division, and StanfordAI.
Embark is now preparing for a bigger test fleet of trucks and is gearing up for a nation-wide launch. Rodrigues says;
We are committed to proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that this technology is safe and reliable. That means performing extensive tests and working with our partners in the government to get it — and the market — ready.
