AI takes the tedium out of trucking

Ti Gong

A batch of six domestically developed self-driving trucks, featured by artificial intelligence, will be shipped abroad later this year, said the developer on Friday at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference. 

Developed by local startup Westwell, the Q-trucks do not have a driver’s seat, Instead, they have extra batteries and can run for up to 200 kilometers if they are fully laden. 

“Many ports around the world face similar problems of having difficulties finding truck drivers,” said Zhang Shuo from the company. “The pay is not so good and the job is boring.”

Zhang said self-driving trucks can drive on a designated route over and over again without getting bored or feeling impatient. With higher efficiency, the cost of cargo transportation will be reduced significantly.

Apart from the Q-trucks, self-driving straddle carriers developed by the company was also quite popular among the ports.

A couple of days ago, a batch of straddle carriers were dispatched on a cargo ship to Stockholm in Sweden. They will arrive before the end of this year.

Westwell has also developed an information-collecting system which uses video capture technology to record the information on truck activity and containers entering the ports. 

“Traditionally, records were kept by humans and each truck would have to wait for two or three minutes before entering the port area,” Zhang said. “But with AI system, it takes less than 10 seconds.”

So far, more than 30 ports around the world have adopted AI applications developed by Westwell.  

“With the cloud, we are able to improve code and algorithms from headquarters,” Zhang told Shanghai Daily. “In the past, we had to go to the port to help them fix bugs.”