MONTREAL — If it’s daytime, odds are a lone field truck is cruising the streets between Toronto and Brampton, Ont., with nobody behind the wheel.
Bristling with greater than two dozen cameras, radars and “lidar” — a laser-based measurement of distance — the car ferries groceries every day from an automatic Loblaw Cos. Ltd. warehouse at a grocery store in Etobicoke to its headquarters 25 kilometres west of the town.
Sporting a purple emblem, the truck is owned by Gatik Inc., an autonomous trucking agency based mostly in California however with an workplace a 10-minute drive from the shop.
“We’ve been laying down very deep Canadian roots for 5, six years now,” mentioned Wealthy Steiner, a spokesman for Gatik, which positioned its first self-driving truck on a Canadian highway for Loblaw in 2020.
5 of the corporate’s six Isuzu field vehicles in Ontario haul items from a Loblaw distribution facility to retailers on mounted routes within the Higher Toronto Space, all autonomously however with a security driver on board.
Gatik is one among a number of corporations vaulting Canada to the forefront of autonomous trucking, with self-steering haulers powered by home tech already on the highway in Ontario and Texas — however questions round security and laws proceed to pose issues for the nascent trade.
It’s not simply satellite tv for pc corporations which are working in Canada. Homegrown corporations have staked out turf as properly.
NuPort Robotics has partnered with Canadian Tire Corp. Ltd. on a pilot challenge that goals to maneuver items inside a distribution centre north of Toronto.
There, a Volvo eighteen-wheeler undergoes testing on personal roads because it learns to shuttle items “like a taxi for cargo and rearranging containers,” mentioned chief government Raghavender Sahdev. A minimum of a half-dozen Nuport vehicles are within the testing part with prospects in a number of provinces. It goals to start out deploying them commercially on public streets inside a few years, he mentioned.
A Canadian Tire rig outfitted with NuPort Robotics AI is pictured at a Canadian Tire distribution centre in Bolton, Ont., on Friday, April 18, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Laura Proctor
Waabi Innovation Inc. would be the jewel in Canada’s autonomous trucking crown. The synthetic intelligence startup launched in Toronto 4 years in the past, however already runs a couple of dozen autonomous vehicles between the Dallas and Houston areas for Uber Freight, mentioned founder Raquel Urtasun.
Backed by 200 workers and $375 million in funding from companions starting from Uber and Nvidia to Volvo and Porsche, the corporate now finds itself in a race to commercially deploy the primary driverless long-haul truck in Texas. It plans to do this close to the top of the 12 months, Urtasun mentioned in an interview.
“The trade is ripe for this know-how,” mentioned the CEO and College of Toronto pc science professor.
Robotic massive rigs provide key benefits, proponents say.
Amid a driver scarcity that Trucking HR Canada tasks will high 40,000 per 12 months by 2030, driverless autos slash labour wants for employers.
Autonomous vehicles additionally are likely to drive extra effectively. Gasoline financial savings can attain as much as 20 per cent, mentioned Sahdev.
In the meantime, the transport market to be tapped is very large. Revenues from highway freight totalled US$987 billion in the USA in 2023, in accordance with the American Trucking Affiliation. Greater than half of U.S. states permit autonomous vehicles on their roads — with a security driver.
Up to now, Ontario is the one province to allow the observe, through a pilot program that regulates testing of self-driving vehicles, together with these with nobody on board.
Then there’s the persistent query of security.
On the one hand, self-driving software program is free from all-too-human flaws.
“Our robotic vehicles, they don’t get drained, they don’t get distracted,” mentioned Wealthy Steiner of Gatik.
Lengthy-haul vehicles primarily traverse highways, the place the surprises and confusion furnished by crowded city streetscapes, pedestrians and cyclists quantity far fewer.
Alternatively, automated autos harbour defects of their very own.
In April 2022, an autonomous truck from then-San Diego-based startup TuSimple made a pointy left flip throughout a lane on an Arizona interstate freeway, ramming right into a concrete barrier. The corporate mentioned its pc system and the protection driver had been each liable for the incident, which brought about no accidents.
Whereas self-driving autos are much less more likely to crash total, they have an inclination to fare worse than human-steered autos throughout decrease mild and left turns, in accordance with an evaluation final 12 months within the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
Automated techniques additionally battle extra to detect kids and other people with darker pores and skin tones.
In the meantime, snow and fog impede visible sensors simply as they do human eyes, a selected concern in Canada.
Up to now, giant autonomous vehicles have averted critical crashes, in accordance with the U.S.-based Advocates for Freeway Security.
“When you’ve hills, snow or ice … in the event you’re (human) driver, you’ll be able to adapt to that,” mentioned Sidney Givigi, a professor of robotics and machine studying at Queen’s College’s College of Computing. A self-driving automobile can even register climate info and react accordingly, “however it could not decide one of the best ways to function in these situations.”
“Security is an issue largely in areas the place you’ve these harsh environments,” he mentioned.
At Waabi, Urtasun thinks she’s discovered an answer.
Hers is the one firm utilizing what she calls AV 2.0, a generative AI system that permits it to “purpose” slightly than depend on preprogrammed responses that show “brittle” and unscalable, she mentioned.
As a substitute of clocking miles and burning fuel on real-world roads to collect information, Waabi algorithms concoct numerous eventualities to simulate issues and check the car’s response.
Urtasun in contrast her mannequin’s advances to ChatGPT’s leaps over conventional engines like google.
“That’s a really, very highly effective method that’s extra humanlike,” Urtasun mentioned on a video name, backed by a whiteboard crowded with equations. “It chooses the most secure motion in a fraction of a second.”
Nevertheless, even proponents acknowledge there can be accidents. The query is whether or not robo-rigs will pose much less of a threat than vehicles with folks on the helm.
“In the event you’re travelling at 45 miles per hour and a canine actually jumps out proper in entrance of you, properly, we will’t defy the legal guidelines of physics,” Steiner mentioned.
A sluggish regulatory atmosphere marks a last impediment.
“Canada will not be essentially a rustic that strikes actually, actually quick. And laws are a kind of issues,” Urtasun mentioned.
Nonetheless, she thinks the presence of extra self-driving — if not driverless — semis on Canadian roads is merely a matter of time.
“For me, self-driving isn’t just an issue I work on; it’s an obsession. It’s 24-7 in my head.”
