Trail of beers: Uber Freight division completes first autonomous booze run [VIDEO]

San Francisco startup Otto has given a whole new meaning to the term “beer run.” The tech company, which Uber bought last summer for US$680 million, completed a partially autonomous delivery of 50,000 cans of Budweiser this week in Colorado.

Uber isn’t about to head to the fridge to grab us another round of beers quite yet. Otto’s technology only works on the highway, where it doesn’t have to contend with variables like jaywalking pedestrians, four-way stops or hipsters on fixies. But the achievement is part of Uber’s push to enter the surface freight arena with its own new division, called Uber Freight.

While the technology is still in its infancy, the business model for Uber Freight has the potential to be disruptive disrupt to freight forwarding world – at least as disruptive as it’s human displacement potential. In the U.S., most freight is still moved by forwarders, who take a commission of up to 20 percent. Uber Freight could possibly eliminate that middleman and offer shippers real-time pricing, much as they did with passenger services.

According to Wired, Otto’s “Level 4” technology puts it ahead of the tech behind the navigation systems of self-driving Tesla cars. While the publication defines Tesla’s “Level 2” navigation as “a toddler ‘helping’ with the dishes,” the Level 4 tech on the Otto-Uber collaboration is entirely autonomous as long is the vehicle operates in “its safe place.” In the latter case, that’s on the open highway. Everywhere else, there is a driver behind the wheel.

So while this bodes well for connoisseurs of watery beer, most experts don’t expect even Level 3 autonomous technology to be commercially available until 2021, let alone the more advanced Level 4 version that Uber is developing. Fully autonomous trucks are a distant prospect, with trucking industry experts estimating two decades, according to Reuters.

In practical terms, that means that humans will still be integral to last-mile solutions for at least five more years. Otto co-founder Lior Ron anticipates people will become, “harbor pilots, bringing the ship to port.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb0Kzb3haK8