Autonomous

Walgreens and a Google affiliate are testing drone deliveries that can put drugstore products on customer doorsteps minutes after being ordered.

Truckers looking to autogenerate written reports from their databases now have a raft of choices available, thanks to the emergence of artificial intelligence-enabled ­writing software. Essentially, these AI-generated writing solutions can drill down into company databases and autoproduce easy-to-understand, written reports.

What do the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447 and a seminal 2012 study by Google on how people interact with self-driving cars have in common?

No discussion of the future of the trucking industry is complete without considering the advance of automated driving technology, and how it might support the movement of freight in the years and decades ahead.

After several years of fanfare and debate over when and how self-driving commercial vehicles would reach the market, early forms of this technology are beginning to become an option in new trucks.

CENTREVILLE, Va. —While some self-driving truck developers are focused on building a future when heavy-duty vehicles will operate autonomously on the highway, another startup has already begun to commercialize an automated driving system that it believes is market-ready today.

Over the past year, startups working to commercialize highly auto­mated heavy-duty trucks competed for more capital and engineers, and each pushed deeper into systems development.

Drones can offer an appealing alternative to traditional cargo delivery methods, according to Daniel Friedenzohn, associate dean of the College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced $60 million in awards to research groups and state departments of transportation that are exploring projects related to vehicle automation.