Autonomous truck program to begin in Pittsburgh
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - A new autonomous vehicle venture is gaining traction in Pittsburgh.
This one focuses on trucks.
The men behind the former Argo A.I. are now running Stack AV. They launched the new company with a billion-dollar investment from Japan's SoftBank group.
The company hired 150 workers and a fleet of test trucks.
"Autonomous vehicles are safer," Brian Kennedy, vice president of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, said. "They see what drivers cannot. They're better in bad weather. They would make shipping faster – no breaks for sleeping and eating. Long haul trucking is hard work."
Argo A.I. shuttered a year ago last October.
The company landed in Pittsburgh seven years ago thanks to a multi-billion dollar investment from Ford and Volkswagen. But closed shop in October 2022 saying they didn't see a path to profitability on fully autonomous vehicles.
Argo A.I. CEO Bryan Salesky is also heading up Stack AV with other collaborators from the former company.
Blue Sky Pittsburgh reports Salesky has not yet revealed many details about this new company.
"We have learned over the years how to handle and how to build autonomy systems for heavy machinery," Salesky said in a report. "And we'll be able to take that knowledge and bake it into what we're doing at Stack."
Salesky went to the University of Pittsburgh for computer science and worked at Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center.