Trucking Jobs Nebraska looks forward to potential of driverless truck Americans have long had an infatuation with robots,

from Robby the Robot in the 19 ! sci"fi classic #$orbidden %lanet& to 'tanley (ubrick)s *A+ 9,,, and Rosie the maid on #The Jetsons-& Robots even have permeated the trucking industry, as we)ve seen #Transformers& leader .ptimus %rime morphi into /ack 0ranite 1 word is he)ll be a new 2estern 'tar model in the fourth movie- Trucking 3obs Nebraska rarely view these advancements as plausible, but they may be more than we think.f course, robots in the trucking industry are pure fantasy, right4 2ell, maybe notThe notion of autonomous big rigs has been generating a lot of bu55 recently, from financial and tech blogs to The Wall Street JournalThe days of making driverless trucks possible on 6-'- highways may be closer than we think- Technologies used by these automated trucks 1 including cameras to detect lane markings and radar systems for collision avoidance and adaptive cruise control 1 already are used on advanced tractors today7n fact, automated trucks already e8ist 1 at least in some farming and mining applications- $or over"the"road applications, Japan)s New 9nergy and 7ndustrial Technology :evelopment .rgani5ation ;N9:.< 3ust this year successfully completed a test whereby a manner truck was followed by three driverless trucks in what oddly enough started out as a fuel efficiency e8perimentAnd 0oogle 1 which seems to have its hands in everything these days 1 has its own driverless passenger car, e8pected to be commercially available in 3ust four yearsThe test cars have been driven more than ,,,,,, miles to date without an accidentTrucking 3obs Nebraska sees this as worth noting-

2hile we won)t see autonomous trucks actually operating in North America anytime soon, if and when they do arrive on the scene, they likely will be limited to straight, lightly traveled sections of highways- There probably first will be used between two nodes, much like trucking uses rail in an intermodal relay today, with manned trucks performing the initial and final legs of the haul2hether or not driverless trucks actually take to 6-'- roads in the ne8t 1, to 1 years remains to be seen, but what is certain is that we are much farther down the path than we may reali5e- Trucking 3obs Nebraska strongly promotes innovation through technology and are interested to see where this takes the trucking and transportation industries-