Outdoor Autonomous Vehicles

Trend Overview

Impact:

High

Adoption:

5 - 10 Years

Focus Areas:

Automation & Efficiency

Trend Clusters:

Robotics

Sectors:

The trend of Outdoor Autonomous Vehicles encapsulates the variety of self-driving vehicles operating primarily outside on land or water, both within private property and on public rights of way. This trend focuses on vehicles that are either completely driverless or at least highly automated with occasional control by a human driver.

Bolstered by rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI), edge computing, and sensor technologies, self-driving vehicles have come closer to reality in recent years with all modes of highly automated vehicle making an appearance on the market and fully automated vehicles making test debuts.

Successful examples include autonomous delivery robots created by the Estonian robotics company, Starship Technologies which accomplished over 6 million autonomous deliveries by January 2024, reflecting a steady growth trajectory since commercial launch in 2017.

The Outdoor Autonomous Vehicles trend will have high impact in logistics as it will significantly change the operational tasks performed by human workers and alter the way that customers interact with logistics providers in the last mile and elsewhere. Overall, this trend’s realization, however, is quite distant. While implementation has already begun with some use cases on private, gated properties, autonomous driving on public rights of way requires societal confidence. It will take more time before people trust fully autonomous technology and regulations permit unhindered application on a global scale.

Enabling technologies for this trend are improving, particularly in terms of sensors and navigation, but adoption is delayed by regulations, cost, and safety concerns. Outdoor autonomous vehicles are therefore about six or seven years away from widespread adoption in logistics, and experts anticipate greater scaling across geographies within 10 years. The impact of these vehicles is likely to be high, especially within countries facing high labor costs and workforce shortages.

How will autonomous vessels work?

Source: Ali Haseltalab et al. (2017): Autonomous Ship Systems: from Theory to Practice

Relevance to the Future of Logistics

Automated Yard Operations

An effective way to increase safety and respond to workforce shortages is to use autonomous tractors to move objects from point to point in the outdoor environment of a logistics yard, port, or the like.

Manually moving assets, containers, and cargo within a yard is repetitive work that adds minimal value, so automation is an excellent alternative. Digitalized processes include the ability to track and sequence movements, ensuring first-in-first-out (FIFO) inventory management. Container location within a facility can be integrated with the yard management system and scheduling, task assignment, and movements can all be planned in advance.

DHL Supply Chain has deployed proof-of-concept EX9 autonomous shunting robots to reduce the arduousness and risk of accidents on site and improve operational performance while enabling a negative CO₂ footprint. Trials at airports are paving the way for their adoption within private property in logistics and the supply chain.

At Frankfurt Airport, a first-of-its-kind trial in 2023 proved an autonomous electric tractor can augment ground handling by towing baggage trailers or cargo trailers along the relatively long apron, driving at a maximum speed of 13 kph (8 mph). In a similar trial which started in 2023 at Singapore’s Changi Airport, driverless baggage tractors have been enabling autonomous operations on the tarmac. TractEasy vehicles moved around Terminal 3 without a safety driver and Aurrigo driverless baggage trailers were used in a proof-of-concept trial.

In the Port of Rotterdam, an autonomous yard truck initiative has been launched – a collaboration between Kramer Group, a major depot and container terminal operator, Terberg, Europe’s largest manufacturer of yard trucks, and StreetDrone, a leading provider of autonomous yard truck technology. Together, they aim to achieve a new standard for safety, efficiency, and competitiveness at the port, with pilots running in two locations until early 2025.

Next use case

Long-Haul Autonomy

The growing shortage of drivers globally is a huge challenge. Added to this, mechanical or vehicle failures are not the main cause of road accidents, but humans are. Drivers can lose focus especially on long, monotonous journeys; they get tired and they may exceed the speed limit. Often, excess carbon emissions are attributed to poor driving habits like aggressive acceleration.

Together, this provides a compelling opportunity to use automation for long-haul trucking. Although there is a very limited number of roads and highways that currently allow fully autonomous trucking, it is possible for trucks with drivers to deliver and pick up from locations serviced by autonomous trucks. And in the next few years, more highways are expected to allow autonomous trucking.

Long-haul autonomy lowers reliance on human drivers and will likely reduce accident rates and carbon emissions. It enables better planning and scheduling, and more dependable estimated times of arrival (ETAs). For drivers, it also promises a better work-life balance with fewer (potentially even no) long-haul trips and more focus on operating within their local area to support the long-distance journeys undertaken by autonomous vehicles.

In the US, Maersk and Kodiak Robotics have launched a commercial autonomous trucking lane between Houston and Oklahoma City. Autonomous vehicles with 53-foot (16-m) trailers make four round trips per week on a 24-hours-a-day, four-days-a-week basis.

Also in the US, an innovative DHL-Volvo partnership aims to operate hub-to-hub autonomous transportation by creating autonomous freight corridors in Texas running from Dallas Forth Worth to El Paso and from Dallas to Houston.

In China, a TuSimple trial in 2023 showcased the country’s first fully autonomous semi-truck run on open public roads without a human inside the vehicle and without human intervention. Conducted on designated public roads approved by the Shanghai government, the vehicle’s route include the Yangshan deep-water port logistics park and Donghai Bridge, one of the world’s longest cross-sea bridges. The vehicle traveled over 62 km (38.5 miles) and navigated complex road and weather conditions in both urban and highway environments within the port area, including traffic signals, on-ramps, off-ramps, lane changes, emergency lane vehicles, partial lane closures, fog, and crosswinds. This demonstration of Level 4 autonomy was the result of two years of intense development.

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New Last-Mile Models

The last-mile segment of supply chains is expensive, representing about 53% of today’s total shipping costs. With the number of online orders consistently rising and straining delivery services, outdoor autonomous vehicles are seen as a solution that cuts costs while keeping up with demand.

Examples include DHL’s autonomous last-mile express deliveries in Tallinn, Estonia using a robot created by freight autonomy startup Clevon. This initiative was launched in late 2022 and by September 2023 the autonomous robot carrier had delivered more than 1,500 packages. Meanwhile, in Latin America a delivery robot called ADA is helping in the last mile by autonomously calling and riding solo in elevators to deliver orders in Brazilian cities – a successful initiative between iFood and the country’s first autonomous delivery startup, Synkar.

Proving the scalability of last-mile autonomous delivery is a JD Logistics fleet of over 600 vehicles across 30 cities in China, including 100 indoor delivery robots deployed in malls and office buildings in more than 10 cities. JD Logistics’ Generation Five Autonomous Delivery vehicles can carry up to 200 kg (440 lb), travel up to 100 km (62 miles) per charge, and some are equipped with an advanced cold and heating storage system for food deliveries to customers’ doorsteps.

Also in China, Cainiao – the logistics arm of Alibaba Group – broke a new record for autonomous last mile delivery in China. By March 2023, Cainiao’s autonomous Xiaomanlv logistics robots had delivered more than 29 million orders.

These examples illustrate the range of automated solutions for logistics providers to investigate and implement to help manage costs, service levels, and environmental impact in the last mile.

Previous use case

Challenges

Legal restrictions in various regions may prevent or slow adoption.

Potential hacking and the risk of software bugs raise security and safety concerns.

The cost advantages of self-driving solutions may be difficult to calculate; there are often high implementation costs and it can be hard to fiscally quantify the benefits of consistency, efficiency, accuracy, and sustainability.

Upskilling and retraining programs may be needed for employees who are affected by the introduction of driverless vehicles.

Legal restrictions in various regions may prevent or slow adoption.

Potential hacking and the risk of software bugs raise security and safety concerns.

Upskilling and retraining programs may be needed for employees who are affected by the introduction of driverless vehicles.

Challenge 1 Challenge 2 Challenge 3 Challenge 4

Outlook

The trend of Outdoor Autonomous Vehicles is slowly advancing towards broader adoption in logistics. Numerous countries such as China, Germany, Japan, and the US have already approved the limited testing and piloting of outdoor autonomous vehicles on public and private roads. Such approvals will encourage logistics organizations to actively adopt self-driving vehicle technology in facilities and in supply chain transportation segments. While it may still be many more years before fully autonomous vehicles handle outdoor operations, we here at DHL anticipate highly autonomous vehicles with occasional human guidance will be commonplace in many locations within the decade especially in yard operations.

This trend should be CAREFULLY monitored,with developments and use cases on the horizon.