• Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Supplier Directory
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • Logout
  • My Profile

  • CORONAVIRUS
  • LOGISTICS
    • Air Cargo
    • All Logistics
    • Express/Small Shipments
    • Facility Location Planning
    • Freight Forwarding/Customs Brokerage
    • Global Gateways
    • Global Logistics
    • Last Mile Delivery
    • Logistics Outsourcing
    • LTL/Truckload Services
    • Ocean Transportation
    • Rail & Intermodal
    • Reverse Logistics
    • Service Parts Management
    • Transportation & Distribution
  • TECHNOLOGY
    • All Technology
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Cloud & On-Demand Systems
    • Data Management (Big Data/IoT/Blockchain)
    • ERP & Enterprise Systems
    • Forecasting & Demand Planning
    • Global Trade Management
    • Inventory Planning/ Optimization
    • Product Lifecycle Management
    • Sales & Operations Planning
    • SC Finance & Revenue Management
    • SC Planning & Optimization
    • Sourcing/Procurement/SRM
    • Supply Chain Visibility
    • Transportation Management
  • GENERAL SCM
    • Business Strategy Alignment
    • Education & Professional Development
    • Global Supply Chain Management
    • Global Trade & Economics
    • HR & Labor Management
    • Quality & Metrics
    • Regulation & Compliance
    • SC Security & Risk Mgmt
    • Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility
  • WAREHOUSING
    • All Warehouse Services
    • Conveyors & Sortation
    • Lift Trucks & AGVs
    • Order Fulfillment
    • Packaging
    • RFID, Barcode, Mobility & Voice
    • Robotics
    • Warehouse Management Systems
  • INDUSTRIES
    • Aerospace & Defense
    • Apparel
    • Automotive
    • Chemicals & Energy
    • Consumer Packaged Goods
    • E-Commerce/Omni-Channel
    • Food & Beverage
    • Healthcare
    • High-Tech/Electronics
    • Industrial Manufacturing
    • Pharmaceutical/Biotech
    • Retail
  • REGIONS
    • Asia Pacific
    • Canada
    • China
    • Europe
    • Latin America
    • Middle East/Africa
    • North America
  • THINK TANK
  • PODCASTS
  • VIDEOS
  • WHITEPAPERS
Home » With Driverless Cars Late, a Startup Tries Remote-Control Trucks

With Driverless Cars Late, a Startup Tries Remote-Control Trucks

With Driverless Cars Late, a Startup Tries Remote-Control Trucks
April 23, 2019
Bloomberg

For four days in February, Ben Shukman showed up to his office at Phantom Auto in Mountain View, California, sat down in front of a bank of computer screens with a steering wheel in a darkened room, and began driving. As the 25-year-old turned the wheel in Silicon Valley, an empty truck 2,500 miles away in Atlanta picked up semi trailers and towed them around a warehouse lot.

From seven states away, Shukman backed trailers into loading docks and parking spaces. “We were able to do some maneuvers that were so difficult that there were truck drivers there that said that they could not do that,” he said.

Phantom Auto was founded in 2017 to help bridge the gap between the vision and the reality of autonomous vehicles. It offers remote-driving technology that provides human intervention for construction zones, bad weather, roadside emergencies or anything else that might fluster the artificial intelligence piloting a driverless car. With Phantom Auto’s software and a cellular connection, a trained human operator can take over a car and guide it through difficult spots. 

Now the startup is announcing an expansion into logistics, providing remote operation capability for forklifts, delivery robots, and “yard truck” tractors that move trailers around warehouses and shipping centers. Phantom Auto last week said it has raised $13.5m in a round of financing lead by Bessemer Venture Partners. The company has raised roughly $19m to date. 

Phantom Auto’s new line of business shows just how deep the current moment of disillusionment has become for the self-driving car industry. After years of development and more than $10bn in investment, autonomous vehicles still aren’t ready for widespread public use. Phantom Auto’s original strategy was to fill gaps in robotaxi capabilities. But autonomous ride-hailing fleets have made little progress beyond testing and rarely operate without human safety drivers — sometimes working in pairs — sitting in the front seat.

Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo is offering limited ride-hailing service to a small number of customers in suburban Phoenix, usually with a safety driver on board to take over if the robot fails as well as remote monitors who can intervene. Virtually no other autonomous startup is ferrying passengers through traffic — and that means little demand for Phantom Auto’s remote-driving technology. 

Phantom Auto says it has agreements to sell its technology to large automakers, so that faraway backup drivers can troubleshoot robotaxi fleets once they hit the road. “We’ve talked to literally every major player in the space, and given the nature of what we do, we have to have pretty detailed discussions about their limitations, their capabilities, and their actual rollout dates,” said co-founder Elliot Katz. “Everyone who says they're deploying, whatever they say they’re deploying in the near term, it’s completely false.” 

The startup decided to enter logistics as a way to survive in the meantime. Even the stopgap provider in the self-driving industry needed a stopgap strategy. 

“Everyone who says they're deploying, whatever they say they’re deploying in the near term, it’s completely false.” 

Yard trucks, forklifts and delivery vehicles offer a faster path to market because each operates at relatively low speeds, carry no passengers, and can be used without engaging with traffic on public roads. Katz said his company is also looking at possibilities in construction and mining. There is a strong appetite for automated and remote technology in these industries because professional operators can be hard to find and often don’t live close to the job sites where they are needed.

Phantom’s yard truck customers, according to Katz, include retailers with dozens of distribution centers across the country. Using remote operation, the startup can potentially service all of them from a central location, with drivers bouncing instantly from Alabama to Ohio to Oregon as needed. 

If Phantom Auto or its rivals can make this vision real, it will dramatically expand and reshape the labor pool for industrial-vehicle operators. An early-stage venture fund within Google led a $6m investment last year in Scotty Labs, a remote-driving equipment startup. Volvo Construction Equipment recently announced tests of remote-controlled wheel loaders over a 5G cellular network in Sweden.

“There’s a deficit of talent available in our industry,” said Scott Young, Volvo CE’s vice president for customer support in the Americas. “This is how we bring the work to the talent pool.” The legions of young people who play online video games, Young points out, are already learning to work on teams remotely, suggesting that the heavy equipment operator of the future could be more gamer than teamster.  

Shukman, for one, doesn’t fit the profile of the typical yard truck driver. A self-taught roboticist and programmer, he was an avid gamer during his college years at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He once wrote a strategy guide for the game League of Legends that has been viewed over four million times online.

Since joining Phantom two years ago, Shukman has helped test and develop its remote driving consoles. Most of the other remote drivers at Phantom started out as safety drivers at autonomous car developers. Phantom puts all of them through a training protocol that takes about two weeks and requires passing a series of tasks, such as remotely navigating a slalom course.

Shukman hadn’t been inside of an actual yard truck until three months ago when Terberg Group BV, the Dutch manufacturer working with Phantom to put remote-driving systems into its trucks, delivered one to California for retrofitting. He spent a day doing drills and maneuvers in the real truck before moving back inside to practice on the remote console. It took him about two weeks before he felt comfortable.

“The big thing about that shift between driving locally and driving remotely — although it's different, it doesn't necessarily mean it's more difficult,” said Shukman. A highlight reel released by Phantom shows Shukman backing into impossibly narrow spaces, and he describes the visibility on the monitors as superior to looking through a truck’s windshield. 

Most of Phantom Auto’s warehouse clients plan to teach current truck operators to do the job remotely. A few drivers have already been through the training. “They were a little nervous at first,” said Shukman, “and then within the two-week period they were nailing maneuvers that very few people can do.”

It’s too soon to tell, said Katz, whether gamers or truckers make for better remote operators. “The biggest thing that we stress,” said Katz, “is even though you're sitting in a remote location and you're behind the screen, this is real life.”

RELATED CONTENT

RELATED VIDEOS

Logistics Transportation & Distribution Technology Business Strategy Alignment HR & Labor Management All Warehouse Services Robotics Lift Trucks & AGVs RFID, Barcode, Mobility & Voice Order Fulfillment Automotive High-Tech/Electronics
KEYWORDS All Warehouse Services Automation & Robotics Automotive Business Strategy Alignment High-Tech/Electronics HR & Labor Management Lift Trucks & AGVs Logistics Mobility & Voice order fulfillment Technology Transportation & Distribution
  • Related Articles

    Driverless Robotic Vehicles Have Great Potential, But the Human Element Still Needed - for Now

    Driverless Delivery Van Startup Sees Demand Surge Amid Outbreak

    Technology Companies Speed Ahead of Automakers in Developing Driverless Cars

  • Related Events

    How Every Shipper Can Benefit from Modern Drop-and-Hook: Four ways to get nationwide, flexible, and quality drop capacity with unparalleled visibility

Bloomberg

As Retail Sales Improved, Inventories Rose Less in February Than Expected

More from this author

Wake up to Coronavirus Updates and the latest Supply Chain News!

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter

Timely, incisive articles delivered directly to your inbox.

Popular Stories

  • Coronavirus-watch-Armada

    Virus Update: Biden Unveils National Strategy; Pfizer Says It’s Willing to Sell Vaccine to States

    Coronavirus
  • Car Industry

    A Year of Poor Planning Led to Carmakers’ Massive Chip Shortage

    Technology
  • Can Employers Require Employees to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine? Part 1

    Watch: Can Employers Require Employees to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine? Part 1

    Coronavirus
  • U.S. Vaccine Rollout Hindered by Faulty Coordination, Messaging

    WHO Fumes at Western Drugmakers As China Fills Vaccine Void

    Coronavirus
  • Third-Party Cybersecurity

    What Vaccine Supply Chains Must Do to Protect Against Cyberattack

    Coronavirus

Digital Edition

Scb home issue 27

2020 Supply Chain Innovator of the Year

VIEW THE LATEST ISSUE

Case Studies

  • LSP Saves Customer $1.5 Million a Year With MPO Global Inbound Management

  • Auto Supplier Wows Key Client Using riskmethods Supply Chain Savvy

  • Integrating Shipping and Compliance Saves Conglomerate Millions

  • How a Consumer Goods Giant Upped Its On-Time Delivery Performance

  • LSP Wows Global Client, Quickly Advances to Become End-to-End Provider

Visit Our Sponsors

6 River Systems ArcBest Armada
aThingz BluJay Burris Logistics
DSC Logistics DCSA (Digital Container Shipping Association) DHL Resilience360
Genpact GEP Honeywell Intelligrated
Infor Logility Magnitude Software
MPO Old Dominion Oliver Wight
OpenSky Ports America Purolator
QAD Precision Red Classic Riskmethods
TGW Systems Transportation Insights Watson Land Company
Westfalia Technologies Workjam Yang Ming
  • More From SCB
    • Featured Content
    • Video Library
    • Think Tank Blog
    • SupplyChainBrain Podcast
    • Whitepapers
    • Webinars
  • Digital Offerings
    • Digital Issue
    • Subscribe
    • Manage Your Subscription
    • Newsletters
  • Resources
    • Events Calendar
    • SCB's Great Supply Chain Partners
    • Supplier Directory
    • Case Study Showcase
    • Supply Chain Innovation Awards
    • 100 Great Partners Form
  • SCB Corporate
    • Advertise on SCB.COM
    • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact Us
    • Data Sharing Opt-Out

All content copyright © 2016 - 2018 Keller International Publishing Corp All rights reserved. No reproduction, transmission or display is permitted without the written permissions of Keller International Publishing Corp

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing