The yard dog, the diminutive cousin of the Class 8 tractor, is getting an autonomous AI-powered upgrade courtesy of Outrider.Outrider, an autonomous yard operations leader, recently announced an industry-first deployment of advanced reinforcement learning (RL) techniques across its customer sites. FreightWaves spoke with Andrew Smith, founder and CEO of Outrider about what the release means for the startup and how it’s taking the humble yard dog to new heights.For those outside the supply chain, yard operations can consist of drayage operations at ports, intermodal operations at railheads, or in the yards from distribution centers to trucking terminals. The humble yard dog is used to shuttle empty and loaded trailers to and from docks to parking places, where the larger Class 8 tractor hauls the goods for longer distances.Outrider noted in the release that incorporating the RL techniques increased path planning speed by 10x and enabled the Outrider System the ability to move freight more efficiently and safely through crowded, chaotic and busy distribution yards. Smith adds that right now their network represents about 20% of all yard trucks operating in North America with many customers invented in pilot operations since the early days of the company back in 2017.How the reinforcement learning worksRL is part of the successful application of AI in the physical world, where the AI collects a large dataset that is then used to train the AI. For the yard dog, Smith notes the 5 years’ worth of data collected from their autonomous yard trucks is the primary source to train the system. Outrider boasts over 200,000 safety scenarios while third-party safety experts and its Fortune 500 customers validate the safety cases.With that training data, the next step is to reinforce positive behaviors and interactions

Kodiak Robotics strikes first in the driverless truck commercialization race(Photo: Kodiak Robotics)The Permian Basin, known for its huge deposits of oil and natural gas, now boasts the first successful customer launch for driverless truck delivery operations  On Friday Kodiak Robotics and Atlas Energy Solutions announced that Atlas completed the delivery of 100 loads of proppant with two RoboTrucks equipped with Kodiak Driver, Kodiak’s self-driving system. The RoboTrucks are part of Atlas’s launching of the Dune Express, a 42-mile autonomous conveyor belt in the desert that transports sand from Kermit, TX to a facility in eastern New Mexico. The Atlas autonomous RoboTrucks then transport frac sand to customers across the Delaware Basin. This is part of a larger effort by Atlas to automate its entire supply chain. Kodiak Robotics’ initial driverless operations with Atlas, announced last July, involved Kodiak making deliveries with Kodiak-owned trucks. The release notes Atlas is now able to complete its own driverless deliveries across the 75,000 square mile Permian Basin in West Texas and Eastern New MexicoDon Burnette, Founder and CEO at Kodiak said in the release, “this is an incredible moment, for us and for the autonomous trucking industry as we have officially delivered a commercial RoboTruck to a customer and launched commercial operations.”Atlas is expected to expand its RoboTruck operation over the course of this year with Kodiak announcing the opening of an 18,000 square foot facility in Odessa, Texas to help support the operations. Looking ahead, Kodiak looks to extend its safety case to highways for its long-haul customers.Electric vehicle startup Canoo files for bankruptcy, ceases operations(Photo: Canoo)The medium-duty electric vehicle space continues to get smaller. Seven-year-old electric vehicle startup Canoo has filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy and announced an immediate halt to operations. A press release noted the liquidation process is being overseen by a bankruptcy trustee in the Delaware Bankruptcy Court.Despite its partnerships with NASA, the Department of Defense, the U.S