In a vitally important supply-chain niche, the Autonomous Yard Tractor (AYT) space is steadily gaining momentum. Truck Specialized Information Services (TSIS) has chosen RRAI to deploy Automated Vehicle tech in their bustling trailer storage yard in Detroit, Michigan. Operations began last August with initial deployment of two vehicles.
A key component of TSIS’s overall business model is providing trailer / container storage services near intermodal hubs. The company sees AYT’s enhancing their level of service, creating a competitive advantage leading to increased revenue. Carl Rundell, TSIS Founder and CEO, shared their motivation for the partnership, saying “it has become clear to TSIS that implementing RR.AI technology on our yards, is undoubtedly going to optimize efficiency and savings.” “However, more importantly, it is optimization of the entire supply chain. Many of the targeted TSIS yards are around railheads, sea ports and even inland ports. We are looking at starting with the bottlenecks of getting freight into our proposed North American Truck Parking Network.”
RRAI is a multi-faceted autonomy player with deep roots in military autonomy. On the commercial side, RRAI has several autonomous truck projects in off-road environments such as forestry operations and resource extraction. A partnership with Mack Defense on their military common tactical truck is a key part of their dual-use go-to-market strategy. The company is also developing autonomous transit buses, with an initial deployment planned in Connecticut.
RRAI’s CEO Alberto Lacaze said, “In the operational environments where autonomy can be meaningfully deployed today, our technology is gaining invaluable real-world experience. The trajectory we’re on sparks optimism for a bright future. It’s not just about our past successes; it’s about the positive impact we’re creating with customers. Together with TSIS, we are shaping a future where autonomy transforms possibilities into realities.”
Intermodal Inefficiency Brings Opportunities
In transferring cargo from one transport mode to another, the intermodal world is plagued by inefficiency. Every entity that touches a load is seeking to optimize their internal efficiency, which oftentimes results in severe inefficiency across the overall chain of players. The result? Today’s supply chain is too often a hurry-up-and-wait situation, with shipping containers hanging out at many staging points before reaching their final destination.
At a typical seaport, massive cranes unload shipping containers from a ship, carefully placing and securing the containers to a trailer chassis waiting shipside. This gives the container mobility on land so the goods can be moved onwards to inland destinations. A container-on-chassis rig is typically transported astride a train car or pulled by a truck.
CSX is one of the largest freight rail operators in North America. At the company’s sprawling rail terminal in southwest Detroit, when a freight train carrying hundreds of these rigs arrives, the ideal case is that each rig has a long-haul truck ready to hook up and take the load to its final destination. But the world is not perfect, and maybe the needed long-haul trucks aren’t available at that specific time. In these cases, local drayage drivers move the container-chassis rigs from the rail yard to nearby trailer storage yards, which serve as intermediate holding pens. There, the containers sit and wait until there’s time or space for the next step in the journey.
But trailer storage services aren’t free. For the shipper, getting that load moving again is essential. Even if some delays are inevitable, reducing friction and wait times has driven the shipping industry to get ever smarter. That’s where companies like TSIS come in.
On the Livernois Avenue corridor near the CSX rail facility, containers-on-chassis from the CSX rail terminal are trucked a few miles to the TSIS yard to sit for a few hours or days until an over-the-road truck is ready to complete the journey. Or the opposite may be the case, where a long-haul trucker wants to avoid the congestion of the rail terminal and opts to drop their cargo at TSIS instead, enabling the driver to get back on the road and make the most of their driving hours. In the latter case, when the right CSX train is ready for loading, a drayage operator picks up the rig at TSIS and takes it to the rail facility.
Autonomy Inside The Yard
While there are plenty of challenges in moving freight within intermodal terminals and on local roads, operations inside a trailer storage yard are a world unto themselves.
I last reviewed the AYT space about a year ago, discussing the work of Fernride, ISEE, Outrider, and RRAI. Various trials were underway at the time, with Fernride working with DB Schenker and Outrider working with Georgia Pacific. Having come to this party a little later than the others, RRAI was in an initial development phase and hadn’t announced specific projects. So, I perked up when I recently heard about RRAI operating AYT’s in Detroit.
TSIS’s facility there comprises a 17-acre gravel lot with a single gated entrance/exit. With a yard capacity of 450 trailers, over 700 trailer moves are made on a typical day. Re-positioning trailers in this cramped yard is a tedious job that requires a skilled driver.
Tech In Action
While in Detroit for a technical conference last month, TSIS and RRAI invited me to see the AYT system in action, up-close and personal.
Upon arrival, two Kalmar yard tractors were waiting just inside the TSIS entry gate. Festooned with cameras and lidars installed by RRAI, the vehicles had also been equipped with computing power, autonomy software, and actuators. Greg Ramsey, RRAI’s Head of Engineering for Yard Trucks, was on-hand to activate and supervise the system, since the tech was in a shake-down testing phase.
Yard trucks are very basic vehicles, being purpose-built for a non-road environment. There are decidedly no frills for humans. Mr. Ramsey popped easily up into the truck cab and I followed awkwardly to squeeze myself into a tiny jump seat next to the driver’s seat, with nary an inch to spare.
Having been in storage yards before, I expected to experience a rather trivial trucking operation powered by a smart robot driver. It wasn’t that simple.
The AYT had received a mission from the operations center to travel to the far side of the lot and pick up a specific trailer. As soon as our yard tractor started moving autonomously across the uneven gravel, I was holding on for dear life as we bounced along. We were moving at well under 10 MPH, but suspension and ride comfort in a yard tractor? Not so much.
Unfazed, the RRAI robot driver deftly adapted to and avoided other vehicles and workers walking on the lot. When nearing the designated trailer, the AYT swung around to precisely position itself for the trailer connect maneuver. An outside observer may think making this connection is a simple process. It is not.
First, the tractor must be backed up to the trailer so that its fifth wheel is perfectly aligned with the trailer kingpin. Connecting a truck to a trailer is not a delicate process. From a distance of a few feet, the AYT moved briskly backwards towards the trailer. With a “wham!” the tractor’s fifth wheel scooted below the trailer’s kingpin, forcing the trailer up and off its forward stands. At the same time the kingpin locked into the fifth wheel with a satisfying “ka-chunk.” My ears were ringing from the sudden cacophony.
With the trailer stands in the air and the tractor-trailer mechanical connection made, the final task was to connect the gladhands, i.e. air hose connections between the units. One hose provided pressurized air from the tractor to energize the air brakes of the trailer’s wheels. Pressurized air from a second hose controlled the trailer’s emergency brakes; as an industry-wide fail-safe, trailer emergency brakes are activated immediately anytime there is no air pressure coming from the tractor, preventing runaway trailer scenarios.
Since the storage yard is fairly compact, connecting the air lines for this AYT deployment is the job of on-site yard staff. A TSIS employee took about 15 seconds to take care of this essential task and the autonomous truck was ready to go. For demo purposes, the truck then began pulling the trailer across the lot to its designated new resting spot.
This next move was a tricky maneuver for many reasons. The destination parking spot was near a lighting pole and close to the perimeter fence. Not only that, the parking space itself was rather tight. All in all, this created a challenging backing-up process. The AYT vehicle expertly made three maneuvers to position the trailer “just so” before rolling it into the designated parking spot. To the untrained eye, this process could have looked like two misses before successfully getting the parking maneuver right. Not so. This type of scenario is what expert drivers must do to maneuver a tractor-trailer combination in constrained spaces.
In the end, the trailer was tucked very nicely at the edge of the yard. With the air lines disconnected by yard staff, the AYT was then ready to head off on its own for the next mission.
After the demo concluded, I unwound myself out of the tractor jump seat and stepped back onto the pavement. I then noticed a lidar installed at the rear of the vehicle just below the tractor’s fifth wheel. The RRAI team told me this lidar looks to the sides and rear to augment the forward-looking sensors and provide rearward visibility unavailable to a human driver. In fact, the low-to-the-ground mounting allows the lidar to see under the trailer to detect potential hazards on the other side. While it’s theoretically possible to remove all blind spots by placing sensors on the trailers or the yard infrastructure, RRAI told me they see this rear-facing sensor as a cost-effective solution to reducing potential yard collisions.
This video provided by RRAI shows the AYT operations at the TSIS facility.
The RRAI team noted that there is an additional vital but unseen component to their AYT deployment. An RRAI remote supervision center is continually connected to AYT’s in operation, with human overseers stepping in to assist a vehicle in a tricky situation.
Marshalling: An Efficiency Win
Back to the all-important efficiency factor. Typical operations in this type of trailer storage yard involve a drayage driver entering the yard with a trailer and dropping it in a designated parking spot. That drayage driver may do a pristine job of this, but more often than not the parking job will be sub-optimal since the driver will be in a hurry to “be done” and grab their next load. With hundreds of moves per day, the entire yard can become disorderly, shrinking capacity.
The greater the disorder, the more likely minor crashes will occur, incurring liability and further eroding efficiency.
Mr. Rundell noted that this cascading series of negative events can be avoided with an AYT-only yard. A “marshalling lot” can be designated near the entry-exit gate for over-the-road drivers to pull in and quickly drop their trailers and get on to another load elsewhere; no precision parking needed. The AYT will then take the trailer into the larger yard and park the trailer in a tidy manner.
Similarly, a drayage driver coming to pick up a trailer doesn’t need to maneuver through rows of trailers across the entire storage yard. Instead, the AYT can bring that trailer to the marshalling yard, timed with the drayage driver’s arrival. In and out in just a few minutes, the drayage driver is freed up to make more moves within their allotted driving hours.
Mr. Rundell expects another bonus as the AYT’s show off their precision parking skills. “We anticipate a 15% increase in unit capacity with AV yard tractors doing the parking, with capacity increasing further as the system is refined and parking between trailers decreases,” he said.
Air Hose Operators?
Having TSIS staff act as tenders for connecting air hoses is trivial within the relatively small TSIS facility, as they can scoot around on golf carts to keep up with the connect/disconnect demands.
Using people versus technology for connecting air lines depends on the facility where an AYT is operating. Some AYT developers have equipped their vehicle with sophisticated robotic arms to connect and disconnect the air lines between the tractor and trailer. If trailers are coming and going at a large distribution center with hundreds of dock doors, this robotic connection approach could be superior to a team of “human hose connectors” trying to be in the right place at the right time. This must be weighed against the cost of installing and maintaining robotic arms on a small army of AYTs.
The end game is efficiency, not technology.
RRAI’s Head of Commercial Growth Gabe Sganga said “We will focus on vehicle autonomy for now. Gladhand automation can come later, based on customer needs.”
AYT’s In The Chain
Mr. Rundell sees TSIS changing the supply chain conversation in two major ways, “by promoting and building a North American Truck Parking Network, at the same time bringing our own capital to the table to build out a minimum viable network.” He added that TSIS will be deploying many truckports similar to Detroit across the country, in a multi-state and multi-modal manner focused along the major freight corridors. Mr. Rundell emphasized that “the road to success cannot be achieved by one company alone or just private industry. The solution will involve public-private partnerships. We are actively seeking strategic partners, like RR.AI and the State of Michigan, who share our vision and passion.”
I asked Mr. Sganga about RRAI’s process of moving into full commercialization of their AVT tech. He said, “I’d frame the current work with TSIS as a commercial deployment. We share a vision for a North American network of autonomous operations like this Detroit facility centered around railheads and inland ports. This is the pathfinder deployment to demonstrate the maturity of the solution as well as learn how to best integrate it within TSIS’ North American growth strategy.”
He added that “We envision remotely supervised, driver-out operations on the TSIS site being the next steps, where we’ll prove TSIS’s projections that we can improve their efficiency by 25%.”
Later this year, RRAI plans to announce a new OEM partnership that will lead to scalable autonomous yard truck deployments. RRAI adds that the vehicles will be autonomy equipped and warrantied by the manufacturer.
Consolidating efficiency gains in the yard, RRAI aims to take an ambitious next step. “We will eventually expand to autonomous drayage runs operating on local routes such as Livernois Avenue with a fully redundant safety-certified system, which requires no safety driver,” said Mr. Sganga.
Wrap-Up
The AYT market appears to be gaining meaningful traction. In addition to RRAI’s moves, Outrider recently announced plans to launch their commercial system in the second half of 2024.
Those who succeed in the supply-chain game are those who are constantly finding ways to shave off time and space needs in a cost-effective manner. Given the reality of ever-fewer people choosing to drive trucks, a shift to AYT operations may well be the only way to meet ever-increasing demand when it comes to freight yards.
As has been made clear in long-haul and short-haul automated trucking operations, shippers want autonomous technology to be commercially available as soon as possible due to surging demand for freight movement. For a different set of reasons, yard autonomy is coming to the fore as well. Efficiency is the common theme.
Disclosure: I am an Advisor to and/or hold equity in the following companies: Outrider, RRAI.
