Submitted by Lucy Wyndham
North Dakota Farmers Pioneer Autonomous Truck Technology
Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative — owned by sugarbeet growers in North Dakota and Minnesota — are working with Kratos Defense to implement autonomous trucks. Every year, the Minn-Dak fleet drives around 2.5 million miles transporting millions of tons of sugar beets to a Wahpeton factory, but the labor shortage is stalling Minn-Dak’s plans for growth. So, the cooperative teamed up with Kratos to develop trucks that can share some of the load. “We are, to our knowledge, the absolute first ones to have autonomous articulated full-size semis pulling full-sized payload on public roads in the entire United States,” said Minn-Dak Vice President of Agriculture and Research, Mike Metzger.
A leader-follower system
Kratos’ technology is a leader-follower set-up, which means the trucks aren’t quite fully autonomous yet. There’s a driver sitting in one truck, while the autonomous truck follows 300 feet behind and copies the leader’s every move. “Now, of course, the question we get is, well, ‘What if the leader truck goes in the ditch? Will the follower come right in there?’”, said Metzger. “No, I mean, these systems are so advanced that there’s geo fences on every route that we take, and that follower truck knows exactly where it is in relation to the road, its surroundings and especially to the leader truck”.
The trucks were initially owned by Minn-Dak, and then upgraded with Krakos technology — the very same technology used to remote pilot military aircraft. “So we add navigation systems. We add computers. We add the communication systems, which transmit the data from the leader to the follower. We add sensors to the vehicles for situational awareness, obstacles, side obstacles, and of course, the software,” said Maynard Factor, Vice President of Business Development at Kratos. Safety is also a key design priority. “We have redundant navigation systems, we have redundant communication systems. We have redundant safety systems, we have redundant braking actuators. The idea is to not have any single point of failure that could cause a more drastic mishap.”
Cutting-edge technology in the transport sector
Autonomous capabilities are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cutting-edge technologies transforming the entire transport industry, including the vehicle transport industry. Artificial intelligence (AI), for example, is being used to plan and optimize routes on behalf of drivers. Previously, it was up to the driver to continuously monitor routes and change direction as needed to keep deliveries on track. But now AI can take over this responsibility to speed up delivery times and reduce cost. In particular, AI can analyze big data to “optimize the dispatching of vehicles to ensure availability and timeliness”, explains Gabriel Valmonte, Senior Marketing Manager at Monster Lab. “Enriching data with information on route traffic situations and weather can further improve the efficiency and accuracy of scheduling”.
A seamless process
When the autonomous leader truck arrives at the sugar beet factory in Wahpeton, the driver dumps the haul on a designated platform and drives a short distance away. The driver then takes over the steering of the autonomous truck, and drives it to the platform to dump the second load. Once the dumping’s complete, the two trucks should be electronically linked back together before they head on their way. This involves going through and activating a simple checklist on the Kratos computer system.
The distance between the two trucks on the road is around 300 to 500 feet, and the driver can change this as needed, along with the speed. It’s also possible to use three autonomous trucks at a time. As it stands, the North Dakota Department of Transportation permits Minn-Dak to use the autonomous trucks only as long as there’s a driver in the follower truck, but Metzer is optimistic this rule will soon change so as not to require an occupant.
Ultimately, autonomous trucks have been a huge success for Minn-Dak. “Over the last several seasons, our growers and shareholders have made significant investments into our facility. And our facility is starting to slice more and more and gaining capacity for the number of beets or the throughput that we can run through the facility any given day,” Metzger said. And the best is still yet to come. “Seeing this type of technology that’s available and actually seeing it put into practice, man, the next 50 years are going to be nothing but cool.”