Partners to Test Self-Driving Delivery Vehicles in Germany

German package delivery service Deutsche Post DHL (DPDHL) is preparing to launch a test fleet of self-driving electric delivery trucks next year that will be equipped with technology from Nvidia and ZF Friedrichshafen.

The tests will focus on the “last-mile” shipment of packages from a central warehouse to their final destinations, which the partners say is the most complex and costliest aspect of courier and e-commerce deliveries. Using artificial intelligence, advanced sensors and high-speed processors, trucks will be able to sense the surrounding environment, plot and navigate a driving route, and park themselves.

DPDHL, which claims to be the world’s largest mail and logistics company, says its fleet of 3,400 StreetScooter trucks can be equipped with the ZF’s sensors and ProAI processor, which uses Nvidia’s Drive PX 2 computing platform. A prototype delivery vehicle unveiled this week at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference in Munich has six cameras, one radar unit and two lidar sensors.

DPDHL already has configured its data center with the Nvidia DGX-1 AI supercomputer to train its neural networks. The logistics company will run its deep learning models on the in-vehicle Drive PX system.

Deliveries made with autonomous electric trucks are expected to be safer, cleaner, more reliable and less expensive. The number of autonomous vehicles and initial cities to get them will be announced later.