Waymo will start testing self-driving trucks next week

Google sister company Waymo will send self-driving trucks on the road, with freight and all. The trucks will transport loads to Google’s data centers from the American city of Atlanta, in the state of Georgia.

Waymo states in a Medium post that it has been road testing trucks in California and Arizona in the past year and that the software is well on its way to driving the way a human would. Unlike Waymo’s practices in Arizona, the trucks still have a backup driver in the cab. Advances in self-driving trucks would be rapid because the software and sensors are the same as Waymo’s self-driving minivans, but in a different configuration.

Waymo does not say to what extent the trucks will eventually have to drive autonomously. With such large vehicles, driving on the highway is not nearly as challenging as driving in cities, with narrower streets. More development is expected to be required before a truck reaches level 4 automation.

At the same time, other companies are working on the same technology for trucks. Those are Uber, Starsky and Embark, Ars Technica writes. For the time being, these companies mainly focus on autonomous driving on the highway.