According to Kratos, who is competing with Elon Musk’s Tesla to bring self-driving trucking technology to market, the tests saw a series of class-8 tractor-trailers go about forestry activities (not under complete control of humans) equipped with the Leader-Follower Platooning system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The automated platooning technology performed exceptionally well in the challenging forestry environment and hauled unloaded and loaded timber trailers,” Kratos said in a media release yesterday<\/a>. “Our system demonstrated precision navigation in automated platooning mode along complex off-pavement roadways with degraded access to GPS, steep grades, severe visibility-limiting dust, sub-freezing temperatures, rain, and under variable lighting conditions.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wood Central understands that the trial saw two class-8 tractor-trailers, with one human-driven ‘leader’ truck collecting navigation data and transmitting it to one self-driving ‘follower’ truck. Both trucks were then retrofitted with Kratos automated driving systems, allowing the ‘follower’ to follow the ‘leader’s’ navigation data with only a Safety Rider onboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the trial, the human driver (in the Leader truck) played a crucial role in optimising the driverless ‘Follower’ performance – adjusting vehicle speeds, gaps, and maneuvers to adapt to rapidly changing environmental or operational conditions. As a result, this human-in-the-loop decision-maker provides added safety and deployment flexibility by enhancing the navigation performance of the driverless vehicle instead of relying solely on complex and often unpredictable AI and Machine Learning algorithms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The successful deployment of our self-driving truck platooning technology in the Canadian forestry industry demonstrates the ability of the system to navigate complex situations in challenging environments,” according to Maynard Factor, Vice-President of Business Development for the Kratos Unmanned Systems Division. “This is a game-changing, effective, and viable solution for maintaining critical business continuity even under the current driver shortage situation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to FPInnovations, forestry is often reported to be one of Canada’s most dangerous industries – with safety-related incidents occurring during hauling operations on resource roads. Aside from safety concerns, the truck driver labour shortage has plagued the transport industry.\u00a0In Canada alone, there are 25,000 vacancies in trucking, with Trucking HR Canada predicting that number will increase to 40,400 by 2030<\/a>. With the aging driver demographic, vacancies are expected to increase, further straining the labour market.\u00a0The lack of drivers has led to mill shutdowns in the past, and as the shortage increases, this disruption to the supply chain could become a more frequent event.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ‘Platooning’ \u2014where truck drivers steer a convoy of driverless vehicles\u2014has the potential to transform harvest and haulage in remote areas. That is according to FPInnovations, which has just finished a trial with Kratos, which demonstrated that self-driving trucks can operate in remote areas where GPS tracking is not possible. “The initiative aims to accelerate the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23511,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[51,79,46,44,31],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[70],"class_list":{"0":"post-23508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-americas","8":"category-equipment","9":"category-industry","10":"category-sustainable-forest-management","11":"category-top-stories"},"authors":[{"term_id":70,"user_id":2,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jason","display_name":"Jason Ross","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/J-Ross-headshot.jpeg","url2x":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/J-Ross-headshot.jpeg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23512,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23508\/revisions\/23512"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23508"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=23508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"image3](\"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/image3-1.jpeg\")
Why self-driving technology is critical for forestry<\/h6>\n\n\n\n