Convoy

People - including me! - think that self-driving trucks of some sort are a more likely medium term successful application of self-driving technology than robotaxis. To me it's because you can set up fixed routes and do it from transhipment point to transhipment point with appropriate infrastructure installed somewhere out in the empty big middle.

But this ignores a couple of real if solvable issues. One is that people have been overlooking the fact that these robots just don't see very well very far ahead of them and have a hard time distinguishing moving from stationary objects at high speed. The second is, well, trucks weigh 35 tons and are traveling at very high speed and...

SAN FRANCISCO — What a long, strange trip it's been for Uber's self-driving truck division.

The ride-hailing company announced Monday that it was, for now, parking its effort to develop commercially viable self-driving trucks in order to focus on bringing autonomous cars to its service.