Eyal Cohen, founder and CEO of autonomous trucking startup Humble Robotics, describes how advancements in vision-language models shifted his company away from a LiDAR-first stack.
Assertion Contradicted
Cohen: No regular driverless highway trucking service operates today
“There's not a regular driverless service for trucking on highway that exists today. And that's 10 years after we've really put serious effort into the space.”
Insight
Cohen: Highway stops for confused autonomous trucks are highly dangerous
“When, in San Francisco, when a passenger car stops, you know, people go around and they honk, they call they call annoyed their local politicians, whatever, but mostly it's a safe situation. You don't have that advantage on a highway. So, so, so stopping a tru…”
Opinion
Cohen: Level 4 autonomous trucks currently require cameras, LiDAR, and radar
“From my perspective, for a vehicle, a truck, for example, you put on the road, you would want it to have camera, lidar, and radar to do a level four being, you know, driverless, to do a level four truck today.”
Insight
Cohen: Hub-to-hub autonomous freight faces economic hurdles from depot friction
“The challenge in that is, today, you don't have those depots, and somebody has to build those depots, and those depots are friction. Like, who is moving the freight to that depot And why do they want to move into that depot, as opposed to just what they do tod…”
Insight
Cohen: Autonomous freight requires electric drivetrains to enable automated refueling
“If you were going to have fully hands-off freight, you would want it to be electric to charge, to handle the charging in an automated way. It's really hard to do that with diesel.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cohen: Early autonomous trucking rollouts will concentrate on specific segments in Texas
“I don't think you'll see generalized solutions where there's just like autonomous trucks zigzagging like everywhere for a while, but
I think what you'll see is some specific segments, mostly in Texas, where you'll see occasional autonomous trucks and some sc…”