ISEE announces strategic partnership with Holman to scale autonomous yard truck deployment. October 2, 2026 10:01 AM Gift Article This innovative collaboration combines ISEE's autonomous technology with Holman's fleet leasing, upfitting, and management capabilities CAMBRIDGE, MA / ACCESS Newswire / October 2, 2026 / ISEE, a leader in AI-powered autonomous yard operations, today announced a strategic partnership with Holman, a global automotive services organization, to accelerate the commercialization and large-scale deployment of autonomous yard trucks across North America. The collaboration represents a groundbreaking partnership in the U.S. logistics market between an autonomous-driving technology provider and a fleet leasing, upfitting, and management partner. Through the partnership, ISEE will expand its deployment capabilities and market reach by aligning with Holman to offer shared customers a simplified solution for leasing, upfitting, and ongoing vehicle management services. By combining these resources with ISEE's autonomous-driving technology, ISEE will be able to provide customers with a more streamlined, end-to-end pathway for deploying, operating, and scaling autonomous yard truck fleets. The partnership marks an important milestone in ISEE's growth as the company meets customer demand for autonomy systems across thousands of vehicles in the coming years. A Faster, More Capital-Efficient Deployment Model Customers can deploy ISEE's autonomy on customer-owned trucks, Holman-leased trucks, or autonomous-ready vehicles provided by ISEE. Vehicles will be retrofitted and integrated with ISEE's autonomy system before delivery, providing customers with a deployment-ready solution supported by Holman's financing and fleet management services. Instead of separately sourcing trucks, purchasing autonomy systems, coordinating retrofits, arranging financing, and establishing maintenance support, customers will be able to access these capabilities through an integrated commercial offering. The partnership will support both existing and new vehicle fleets. Yard tractors already in operation can be retrofitted with ISEE's autonomy system, allowing customers to quickly upgrade their legacy units to autonomous ones. ISEE will also continue working with leading yard truck OEMs to support autonomy on new diesel, alternative-fuel, and electric vehicle platforms. This flexible approach will allow customers to retrofit existing equipment, lease deployment-ready autonomous vehicles, acquire new vehicles from participating OEMs, or combine these models based on their operational and capital requirements. "Scaling autonomous yard operations requires much more than autonomous-driving software," said Debbie Yu, President and Co-Founder of ISEE. "Customers need access to vehicles, production capacity, financing, fleet integration, and reliable lifecycle support. Building upon my years of growing the ISEE organization and customer base, I have focused our commercialization strategy on bringing those capabilities together into one integrated ecosystem." "By combining ISEE's autonomous technology with the Holman Robotics platform, we are creating a faster, simpler, and more capital-efficient way for customers to deploy and operate autonomous yard truck fleets," Yu continued. "Customers will be able to access deployment-ready vehicles together with the infrastructure required to scale them reliably across multiple locations." Expanding Market Access The partnership also creates strategic value for both companies. ISEE will be able to leverage Holman's industry-leading fleet leasing and management expertise as well as the company's extensive upfitting capabilities. Holman will further expand its robotics offering through ISEE's autonomous yard truck technology. Together, the companies plan to pursue joint go-to-market opportunities, reach new customers, and accelerate the adoption of autonomous yard operations. "Debbie Yu and the ISEE team have built significant momentum in recent years and market demand for autonomous yard operations continues to grow," said Holman's Vice President of Robotics Joe Foster. "By combining Holman's robot fleet leasing and management infrastructure with ISEE's autonomous technology, we can provide customers with a practical solution covering the full vehicle lifecycle." Holman is also a strategic investor in ISEE, further aligning the companies and reinforcing confidence in ISEE's technology, leadership, and transition from pilot programs to large-scale commercialization. The collaboration connects the principal components of the autonomous fleet ecosystem: ISEE's autonomous-driving technology, Holman's fleet leasing and management solutions as well as the company's upfit capabilities, and vehicle platforms supplied by ISEE's OEM partners. Together, this partnership offers customers a unified and scalable path to autonomous fleet deployment. About ISEE ISEE is transforming logistics yards through AI-powered autonomous vehicle technology. The ISEE autonomous yard truck solution is designed to operate in complex, mixed-traffic environments and help customers improve safety, productivity, and operational consistency. As President and Co-Founder, Debbie Yu leads ISEE's commercialization strategy, strategic partnerships, and enterprise expansion. 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ISEE announces strategic partnership with Holman to scale autonomous yard truck deployment. October 2, 2026 10:01 AM Gift Article This innovative collaboration combines ISEE's autonomous technology with Holman's fleet leasing, upfitting, and management capabilities CAMBRIDGE, MA / ACCESS Newswire / October 2, 2026 / ISEE, a leader in AI-powered autonomous yard operations, today announced a strategic partnership with Holman, a global automotive services organization, to accelerate the commercialization and large-scale deployment of autonomous yard trucks across North America. The collaboration represents a groundbreaking partnership in the U.S. logistics market between an autonomous-driving technology provider and a fleet leasing, upfitting, and management partner. Through the partnership, ISEE will expand its deployment capabilities and market reach by aligning with Holman to offer shared customers a simplified solution for leasing, upfitting, and ongoing vehicle management services. By combining these resources with ISEE's autonomous-driving technology, ISEE will be able to provide customers with a more streamlined, end-to-end pathway for deploying, operating, and scaling autonomous yard truck fleets. The partnership marks an important milestone in ISEE's growth as the company meets customer demand for autonomy systems across thousands of vehicles in the coming years. A Faster, More Capital-Efficient Deployment Model Customers can deploy ISEE's autonomy on customer-owned trucks, Holman-leased trucks, or autonomous-ready vehicles provided by ISEE. Vehicles will be retrofitted and integrated with ISEE's autonomy system before delivery, providing customers with a deployment-ready solution supported by Holman's financing and fleet management services. Instead of separately sourcing trucks, purchasing autonomy systems, coordinating retrofits, arranging financing, and establishing maintenance support, customers will be able to access these capabilities through an integrated commercial offering. The partnership will support both existing and new vehicle fleets. Yard tractors already in operation can be retrofitted with ISEE's autonomy system, allowing customers to quickly upgrade their legacy units to autonomous ones. ISEE will also continue working with leading yard truck OEMs to support autonomy on new diesel, alternative-fuel, and electric vehicle platforms. This flexible approach will allow customers to retrofit existing equipment, lease deployment-ready autonomous vehicles, acquire new vehicles from participating OEMs, or combine these models based on their operational and capital requirements. "Scaling autonomous yard operations requires much more than autonomous-driving software," said Debbie Yu, President and Co-Founder of ISEE. "Customers need access to vehicles, production capacity, financing, fleet integration, and reliable lifecycle support. Building upon my years of growing the ISEE organization and customer base, I have focused our commercialization strategy on bringing those capabilities together into one integrated ecosystem." "By combining ISEE's autonomous technology with the Holman Robotics platform, we are creating a faster, simpler, and more capital-efficient way for customers to deploy and operate autonomous yard truck fleets," Yu continued. "Customers will be able to access deployment-ready vehicles together with the infrastructure required to scale them reliably across multiple locations." Expanding Market Access The partnership also creates strategic value for both companies. ISEE will be able to leverage Holman's industry-leading fleet leasing and management expertise as well as the company's extensive upfitting capabilities. Holman will further expand its robotics offering through ISEE's autonomous yard truck technology. Together, the companies plan to pursue joint go-to-market opportunities, reach new customers, and accelerate the adoption of autonomous yard operations. "Debbie Yu and the ISEE team have built significant momentum in recent years and market demand for autonomous yard operations continues to grow," said Holman's Vice President of Robotics Joe Foster. "By combining Holman's robot fleet leasing and management infrastructure with ISEE's autonomous technology, we can provide customers with a practical solution covering the full vehicle lifecycle." Holman is also a strategic investor in ISEE, further aligning the companies and reinforcing confidence in ISEE's technology, leadership, and transition from pilot programs to large-scale commercialization. The collaboration connects the principal components of the autonomous fleet ecosystem: ISEE's autonomous-driving technology, Holman's fleet leasing and management solutions as well as the company's upfit capabilities, and vehicle platforms supplied by ISEE's OEM partners. Together, this partnership offers customers a unified and scalable path to autonomous fleet deployment. About ISEE ISEE is transforming logistics yards through AI-powered autonomous vehicle technology. The ISEE autonomous yard truck solution is designed to operate in complex, mixed-traffic environments and help customers improve safety, productivity, and operational consistency. As President and Co-Founder, Debbie Yu leads ISEE's commercialization strategy, strategic partnerships, and enterprise expansion. 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How private yards became autonomous trucking's most promising frontier. Before Yibiao Zhao and Chris Baker launched ISEE AI in 2017, the two co-founders were deep in research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, building artificial intelligence for what they called "collaborative robots." The focus: teaching machines to understand human social intentions and navigate complex environments the way people do. "We were building AI for robots to understand social intention: how a robot understands humans in a complex environment, how to navigate similarly to a human," Zhao, ISEE AI's CEO, said in an interview with FreightWaves at ACT Expo. "At that time we were looking at how this should be very useful for the age of physical AI." That "theory of mind" research would prove foundational for the company's eventual product - autonomous yard trucks that must operate alongside human workers ranging from forklift operators to over-the-road drivers in chaotic, unstructured environments. The strategic pivot: from highway to yard. ISEE AI's initial bet was on the highway. By 2018, the company was hauling loads for a large e-commerce customer on the busy Dallas-Houston corridor. "At that time we could already engage ours without any intervention between Dallas and Houston," Zhao said. "It was very easy to do a demo." The problem was everything beyond the demo. Highway trucking demands fail-operational systems that can handle nearly infinite edge cases at high speeds with 45,000 pounds of kinetic energy in tow. Customers saw the capability, but they then offered a different challenge. "Our customers said, 'Oh, I really like your technology. Why don't you look at my backyard?'" Zhao recalled. "Because it's private property, there's no regulation. There's no random people, no teenage drivers. Everyone wears safety vests, lower speeds. We always have an option to stop." By late 2018, ISEE AI had pivoted entirely to yard operations. The move let the company shift from fail-operational requirements to a fail-safe, fail-stop architecture. The regulatory landscape simplified, and public-acceptance issues largely disappeared. The only remaining hurdle was proving to customers that the technology worked. Mastering the 'inverted pendulum': technical challenges of backing. Yard operations demand constant backing - coupling to trailers, parking in tight dock doors and repositioning loads. For autonomous systems, going backward is fundamentally harder than driving forward. "Unlike other autonomous trucking companies, when they pull forward the trailer follows you," Zhao explained. "But when you're backing, it's kind of like an inverted pendulum - it's an unstable system. You push something, it's very easy to diverge, so you have to very actively control it." Complicating matters: Every trailer is different. Sizes vary, tandem positions shift and weight distributions change dramatically - from 10,000 to 45,000 pounds depending on the load. Traditional autonomous systems calibrate over days or months. ISEE AI has only seconds to make a connection in a busy yard. "We use machine learning to learn that in real time," Zhao said. "Before we get to the parking - because usually we'll pull out before we get to parking - we already have a very accurate understanding of the trailer and its kinematics and dynamics." The result: better-than-human backing performance and what Chris Baker, ISEE AI's chief scientist, called "one-stop, one-shot parking" more than 98% of the time. "No realignment, no pulling out, pulling back - which takes two to three minutes if you had to realign and reset your parking angle," Baker said. Solving auto-coupling: three paths to connection. The "last foot" of yard automation involves physically connecting air and electric lines to trailers. This remains one of the industry's hardest problems. ISEE AI offers three solutions depending on customer constraints. The first is a robotic arm that uses computer vision to connect directly to trailer glad hands. It requires no permanent trailer modifications, making it ideal for customers who don't own their fleets. "We have deployed our robotic arm solution to customer sites and we're learning all the edge cases - different lightings, different types of glad hands - and continuously improving the coverage and reliability of that system," Zhao said. The second option leverages a partnership with Electrans, which provides a cassette-style permanent trailer modification for customers who own their equipment and are willing to make the capital investment. The third - ISEE AI's own magnetic trailer adapter - splits the difference. The device attaches magnetically to the bottom of a trailer, standardizing the connection interface without permanent modification. Attachment and detachment take roughly 30 seconds. "It allows temporary attachment," Zhao said. "Before they leave the yard they can disconnect and remove it if they need to." Efficiency gains and operational impact. Beyond backing precision, autonomous yard trucks eliminate the operational drag of human breaks. There are no lunch stops, restroom visits or smoke breaks. "You're gaining at least an hour per shift off of no breaks - continuous operations," Baker said. Customers also report dramatic reductions in damage claims and safety incidents. Zhao described one customer site where an over-the-road driver placed a trailer at the wrong dock door. A yard driver, unaware that warehouse workers had already loaded a conveyor system inside, pulled the trailer - and "the whole conveyor system fell." "That's like hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage just because of that," Zhao said. "For us, we follow the customer workflows step by step, and we make sure those things won't happen." ISEE AI currently operates more than 20 autonomous vehicles at customer sites, executing thousands of moves per week with no reported safety incidents. Safety case completion and future scaling. The company's path to mass deployment cleared a critical milestone with completion of its safety case, validated by third-party assessor FEV against ISO 26262 and Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF) standards under ISO 21448. "Customers poked us with a thousand questions - show me this, show me that, show me the data, show me the video," Zhao said. "Eventually they say, 'Yeah, this is bulletproof. You basically covered everything.'" With the Generation 7 autonomy kit now finalized and a manufacturing partnership with terminal tractor OEM TICO in place, ISEE AI is targeting serial production for 2027. The company is securing orders for hundreds of trucks in the coming year. "The turning point is the closure of the safety case as well as the next-generation truck," Zhao said. "Now we're ready to really push forward to large-scale deployment."