Autonomous trucking startup Gatik is ditching the driver in Canada
San Francisco tourists, Phoenix suburbanites and now Canadian bacon — the list of driverless cargo keeps growing.
Gatik AI Inc., a California-based autonomous driving startup focused on middle-mile deliveries, is taking the humans out of a 7-mile truck delivery route it runs for grocery giant Loblaw Companies Ltd., Canada’s largest retailer. Five-year-old Gatik has been operating driverless trucks in Arkansas for more than a year as part of a partnership with Walmart, but this is its first fully autonomous foray north of the border. The Canadian leg runs from a Loblaw fulfillment center northwest of downtown Toronto to one of the company’s nearby Real Canadian Superstores.
“This is the outcome of what we’ve been doing the last few years,” said Gatik CEO Gautam Narang. “Four-way intersections, bicyclists, pedestrians — the truck encounters all those things.”
Gatik’s progress is born of pragmatism. Rather than training its algorithms to handle any potential driving route in a defined area, the company is focused on short, static routes that delivery trucks repeat on a loop.
Gatik engineers and algorithms study a route for months before letting the robots steer, and are able to program specifically for certain sticky points. With no passenger, there’s nobody to get frustrated, for example, if the rig takes three rights instead of a left. And while the trucks still have human chaperones — one dedicated human per truck — they patch into the vehicle from a remote location. If the truck runs into trouble, it executes a “graceful recovery,” essentially pulling over and pinging its overseer like a lost teenager dialing dad.