Over flat highways and rolling rural hills, a small fleet of passenger vehicles and tractor-trailers have been learning to drive on Ohio’s roads for years now. But for the first time this summer – though on semi-private roads – some don’t have human drivers present.
These first deployments of autonomous trucks and cars, backed by artificial intelligence and a suite of lidar (similar to radar, but using light instead of radio waves) and camera technology, are limited in scope. The trucks are festooned with purple lights, which the truck’s operators say will send a clear signal of an autonomous driving mode to law enforcement without advertising their status to anyone looking to stress test it.
Ohioans are unlikely to see them in the wild just yet. But they could be early indications of a significant shift away from human beings controlling our cars.
The state currently only allows fully self-driving cars on the road for testing and research. In most self-driving deployments in Ohio, a human sits behind the wheel ready to take over, especially in more complicated driving environments such as construction zones or during bad weather.
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