CORNELIUS, N.C. — NASCAR is known for its world-class drivers, but lately some of its deliveries have not required one.
A fully driverless 18-wheeler helped deliver tires from Mecklenburg County this year for several races in Indiana, marking one of the first real-world commercial deployments of autonomous trucking in motorsports logistics.
The technology comes from Kratos Defense, a security and IT company that has developed a “leader-follower” trucking system designed to help address the nationwide driver shortage. The setup allows one human-driven truck to control a second truck that follows behind.
“The lead truck, which is a human-driven truck, is driving the route. It is collecting navigation data and then transmitting that navigation data to the driverless follower so that enables a single driver to actually haul two trucks at one time,” vce president of business development for Kratos Defense Maynard Factor said.
The trucks work in a leader-follower system mimicking every steering move of the first truck through sensors.
“The way we control the mobility of the truck is we have actuators that we add to the vehicle. We have a steering actuator that interfaces to the steering wheel to control the steering left and right,” Maynard said.
Safety is a major focus for Kratos as the driverless truck is equipped with front-mounted radar, sensors and obstacle detection systems that allow it to stop automatically, if needed, with an additional driver on standby to take over the vehicle. Additionally, driver training for the program currently takes around two weeks, starting in the classroom before transitioning to test-track sessions.
Truck driver Michael O’Neill, who has more than 30 years of experience behind the wheel and works as a driver and system operator with Kratos Defense, believes the system is not here to replace drivers but instead support them.
“I think that really complements the work force, having something like this, because you could put a inexperienced driver in the follower, an experienced driver in the leader, and that will definitely help with the training and route,” O’Neill said.
For businesses like Champion that need seamless transport to deliver their for the races, the benefits are immediate with trucks arriving sooner than they would if they had a single driver.
“It’s just week to week, the grind to the race schedule. So we’re trying to increase our efficiency and productivity of our fleet. When we get to the racetrack, the team can split up and maneuver that into the race track and then unload and do what we need to do there to service the teams,” said Kevin Mahl, president and CEO of Champion.
Kratos says the autonomous leader-follower system is already being used to move agricultural goods and energy supplies with plans to expand to more commercial freight routes in the future.