The autonomous driving industry has had a challenging ride in recent months; many of us will have seen a number of negative headlines about the industry and its future. The reason we see these headlines now is, at least partly, due to the ramifications of a challenging economic climate. In today’s economic climate – the industry, investors, and perhaps most importantly – the end customers – need to see solutions that are technologically and commercially viable in 2023-2024.

The path to commercial viability, for us at Sensible 4, lies in the difference between open and closed road operations. From the perspective of autonomous driving, open roads pose two key challenges: the first is a lack of consistent AD regulation to be able to operate in the first place, and the second is a need for the technology to be able to manage the unpredictability that comes with other road users, whether their behaviour is law-abiding or not.

Closed road environments, such as industrial sites, are an altogether different prospect. Industrial sites (factories, shipping terminals, mills, plants, logistics yards, and quarries) have a common approach and standards to match. The automated truck fits well into this picture of safety first and adherence to protocol. It’s not just the site environment that lends itself well to automation; the very nature of the industrial site operation sees trucks drive at slow speeds, across short distances, continuously carrying out repetitive tasks. The demand for digital transformation in manufacturing and logistics sites, coupled with the need for sustainable and efficient business operations, is driving the deployment of autonomous driving technology in the industrial segment.

Revolutionizing Industrial Transportation: Sensible 4’s DAWN™ Platform Enables Autonomous Driving in Challenging Environments and Weather Conditions

In 2022, Sensible 4 released DAWN™, a unique autonomous driving platform, which enables our customers to build and retrofit heavy-duty vehicles that can self-drive in the most demanding industrial environments (dust, mud, gravel) and weather conditions (snow, rain, wind). It’s a product that is developed based on the original logic for establishing Sensible 4 – enabling continuous automated driving, irrespective of the environmental and weather conditions. Since launching DAWN™, we have partnered with industry leader UD Trucks to automate a heavy-duty Quon dump truck at a live industrial site in Japan. The successful completion of the project represents a significant, and exciting, milestone for the future of automated transportation within the industrial segment. The potential for this technology to revolutionize mobility in the industry is exciting, and with the readiness of the technology today, the benefits can be realized in a short time frame.

Read related blog on Sensible 4 site, Written by Harri Santamala,
CEO of Sensible 4

The picture is from the Sensible 4 website article on the subject