Humble Hauler autonomous trailer takes the truck out of trucking

The startup that dares to ask, “Why does the Macbook driving my freight around need a whole cab?” just showed off a fully driverless, cab-less, and truck-less battery-electric freight platform designed to handle containerized cargo more efficiently than ever.

Instead of looking at the tractor and asking how to make it work without a driver, Humble looked at the trailer, itself, redesigning the container chassis as a vehicle from the ground up. The end result isn’t just an autonomous solution, it’s an overall lighter platform without a cab that saves shippers the weight of a sleeper cab, a day cab, or the truck at all.

The Humble approach is said to improve payload efficiency of shipping containers, and intended for dock-to-dock operation.

“I have dedicated my career to building electric and autonomous vehicle technology,” explains Eyal Cohen, Humble Robotics’ founder and CEO. “For the first time, freight can be fully automated all the way to the loading dock. We are making freight sustainable, safe and efficient in a way no one thought was possible. And we’re doing it with an exceptional team of industry veterans and AV experts.”

Emerging from stealth after a $24 million funding round, Humble claims to have completed its first Humble Hauler prototype in less than six months – and they’ll soon be ready to begin autonomous testing in pilot programs with a number of logistics partners.

The vehicle uses a combination of cameras, lidar, and radar for 360-degree awareness (unhindered by seeing around a cab), and uses vision-language-action models to help the system respond to new scenarios.

Electrek’s Take

Thanks to superior battery tech, a maturing global charging infrastructure, and a permanently damaged MidEast oil supply, there’s never been a better time to be an EV startup. Humble is hitting all the electric trailer buzzwords, too, while also touting the fact that the electric powertrain can reduce a company’s to volatile fuel prices even as it helps produce other cost benefits like lower maintenance costs.

And if a robot like this can deliver on its promises without the baked-in inefficiencies of humanoids, they might be one step closer to provide that the most efficient solution to a problem is rarely a general one, and even rarer is it a solution that looks like a human.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Humble, via ACT News.

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