UNLV, German Research Company Work on Autonomous Delivery Truck
University of Nevada-Las Vegas is joining a German research company to develop an autonomous delivery truck, the university announced July 23.
The project is a collaboration among UNLV, Fraunhofer IVI, a German transportation research company, and the Governor’s Office of Economic Development.
In our debut episode of RoadSigns, we ask: What does the move toward autonomy mean for the truck driver? Hear a snippet from Alex Rodrigues, CEO of Embark, above, and get the full program by going to RoadSigns.TTNews.com.
Fraunhofer IVI will send an engineer to UNLV’s Transportation Research Center to work on mobility research projects in Southern Nevada. And UNLV will send an engineer to Germany to assist Fraunhofer IVI with a project to develop computers to recognize objects in a similar fashion as the human eye.
“Previous collaborations I’ve participated in with Fraunhofer have resulted in the development of products and services that would not have been possible otherwise, and I see the same possibilities for transformative innovations to come out of this new partnership,” said Zachary Miles, UNLV’s associate vice president of economic development. “Together, we could create a new breed of research and economic development opportunities in Southern Nevada.”
Work will center on Fraunhofer IVI’s AUTOtruck project to equip distribution center trucks with technologies for automated delivery.
“We want to establish the transatlantic exchange of personnel and know-how as a lever for the developments at both institutions,” said Frank Steinert, group manager for vehicle and propulsion technologies at Fraunhofer IVI. “With our program, the institutions are able to benefit from new approaches and solutions of their foreign partners.”
Gov. Brain Sandoval said he wants Nevada to be a leader in autonomous transportation to diversify the state’s economy.
