• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, December 11, 2019

Autonomous vehicles increasingly are being used to transport things rather than people.

Earlier this week, Walmart said it planned to start delivering groceries in Houston using Nuro self-driving vehicles.

Now another well-known brand is getting into the act.

Land O’Lakes, Inc., the 98-year-old, $15 billion agribusiness and food company, is testing autonomous trucks for large deliveries of its butter.

An autonomous truck from Plus.ai just completed what it called the first coast-to-coast commercial freight run with an autonomous truck.

The Plus.ai L4 truck traveled 2,800 miles from Tulare, California, to Quakertown Pennsylvania, in fewer than three days to deliver a load of 40,000 pounds of Land O’Lakes butter.

As is typical in autonomous vehicle trials, a safety driver was on board, though the vehicle drove primarily in autonomous mode through the entire trip, according to Plus.ai.

The fully loaded refrigerated tractor trailer navigated day and night, along winding roads, through tunnels, road construction and on rainy and snowy roads.

The truck was equipped with Plus.ai’s autonomous driving system using multimodal sensor fusion, deep learning visual algorithms and simultaneous location and mapping technologies so it could “see” vehicles ahead and around it.

“Self-driving and other emerging transportation technologies stand to completely reshape commercial shipping, so we are thrilled to pilot autonomous trucks for our shipping needs,” stated Yone Dewberry, Land O’Lakes’ chief supply chain officer. “End of the year is a very busy time for us. To be able to address this peak demand with a fuel- and cost-effective freight transport solution will be tremendously valuable to our business.”

Self-driving vehicles for people may not yet be ready for prime time, but they are getting better and more practical for carrying things.