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Otto Self-Driving Truck Kit Delivers Budweiser Beer

Otto is a self-driving truck startup; they've been working with Anheuser-Busch to deliver Budweiser beer to worthy customers without human intervention.


(Otto works with Anheuser-Busch to deliver beer video)

Last week, self-driving truck start-up Otto teamed with Anheuser-Busch to successfully deliver a semi-tractor full of beer from Fort Collins, through Denver and on to the southern Colorado city in the shadow of Pikes Peak.

For the majority of that 120-mile trip, the truck's driver left his seat and observed the road from the comfort of the sleeper berth. An Otto video of the drive shows the slightly disconcerting image of a massive 53-foot trailer filled with 2,000 cases of Bud rumbling down I-25 with no human in the cab.

In his 1956 story The Corkscrew of Space, sf legend Poul Anderson described self-driving trucks called electrotrucks:

As he watched, [the spacecraft] entered its cradle and was wheeled off toward the waiting electrotrucks. Unloading began immediately; the trucks gulped packages and scurried like beetles toward the warehouses.

Update 10-Dec-2016: See the automatic truck from Mechanocracy (1932) by Miles J. Breuer. End Update.

Via USA Today.

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/17/2016)

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