Tag: OTTO

OM in the News: Self-Driving Truck Makes a Beer Run

self-driving-truck-1The futurists of Silicon Valley may not have seen this one coming: The first commercial delivery made by a self-driving truck was 2,000 cases of Budweiser beer. This week, Otto, the Uber-owned self-driving vehicle operation, completed its first commercial delivery, having delivered its beer load from Fort Collins, Colo., to Colorado Springs, a 120-mile trip. Otto said a trained driver was in the cabin of the truck at all times to monitor the vehicle’s progress and take over if necessary. At no point was the driver required to intervene.

In recent years, Uber has predicted a future in which you can ride in a self-driving car that will take you where you want to go, no driver necessary. But the idea that commercial trucking could be done by robot is a relatively new idea — and a potentially controversial one, given the possibility that robots could one day replace human drivers. The delivery was indicative of Uber’s larger ambitions to become an enormous transportation network, one in which the company is responsible for moving anything, like people, hot meals or cases of beer, around the globe, at all hours and as efficiently as possible.

An Otto truck on the road, with the driver’s seat empty.
An Otto truck on the road, with the driver’s seat empty.

Annual U.S. trucking industry revenue topped $720 billion in 2015, reports The New York Times (Oct. 26, 2016). Anheuser-Busch, for example, delivers more than a million truckloads of beer domestically every year. “We view self-driving trucks as the future, and we want to be a part of that,” says a Busch executive.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. What are the implications for the logistics industry?

       2. Why did Uber buy Otto?

OM in the News: With New Self-Driving Robots, A Revolution in Material Handling

ottoA swarm of robots will soon be overtaking John Deere’s Wisconsin  plant, reports New Equipment Digest (March, 2016). A fleet of new-generation AGVs will begin zipping through the lanes of the company’s assembly line, hauling parts and materials across the plant in an efficient, automated buzz. On the face of it, there is nothing too exciting about this news. Automated Guided Vehicles have been scurrying around plants in one form or another for decades already.

But John Deere’s fleet will mark the latest deployment of Clearpath Robotics’ OTTO 1500—a fully self-driving, autonomous robotic vehicle. The machines are capable of transporting up to 3,000 lb of goods through congested plant and warehouse environments without the need for drivers, supervision, or guidance infrastructure.

That last detail is what makes this technology exciting. Traditional AGVs require a lot of work and a lot of free space to run safely and efficiently. In the past, this has meant tying them to magnetic strips or grids of barcodes crisscrossing human-free transport lanes. OTTO taps into the same sensor-driven, high-computing backbone of Google’s self-driving car to safely and efficiently transport supplies along the same plant and warehouse paths populated by workers and equipment.

OTTO is basically off the track–similar to the difference between subway systems and taxis in a busy city. There is a time and a place for a subway system. But when speed and efficiency are needed, there is also a time and a place for taxi cabs. To make that jump, Clearpath had to tap into the full arsenal of today’s technological tools.

Classroom discussion questions:

  1. How do these AGVs differ from Amazon’s Kiva robots?
  2. What are the advantages of using robots in manufacturing?