Amid a serious truck driver shortage, convenience store chain Seven-Eleven Japan began a trial delivery service using robots on public roads in a western Tokyo suburb on Monday. In the experimental project involving two stores in the city of Hachioji, two robots at each outlet carry items ordered through the 7NOW delivery service app. The four-wheeled box-type robots, which can travel up to 6 kph, are designed to run on sidewalks while following traffic lights and dodging obstacles. After conducting the tests until February next year, Seven-Eleven Japan will consider the feasibility of the robot delivery service, which is expected to help the company cope with a driver shortage and better serve older customers who have difficulty going out shopping.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The company behind a disastrous change to a Kentucky city's school bus routes that resulted in more than a week of canceled classes had similar problems in two cities in neighboring Ohio last year. Touting its connections to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, bus-routing vendor AlphaRoute pitched its mathematical models and machine-learning technology as a way of saving money and smoothing out complex bus routes in Louisville, Kentucky, and school districts across the U.S. But real-world problems often got in the way.

This article is part of a VB Lab Insight series paid for by Plus. Breaking away from the competition, Plus, a Silicon Valley-based provider of autonomous trucking technology, is taking an innovative driver-in approach to commercialization that aligns with the critical challenges facing the trucking industry today. According to newly-released estimates of traffic fatalities in 2021, crashes involving at least one large truck increased 13% compared to the previous year. With a nationwide truck driver shortage estimated at 80,000 last year and growing, PlusDrive, Plus's market-ready supervised autonomous driving solution, helps long-haul operators reduce stress while improving safety for all road users. In 2021 Plus achieved a critical industry milestone, becoming the first self-driving trucking technology company to deliver a commercial product to the hands of customers.

Many Americans might not realize that driverless tractor-trailers are currently navigating the nation's highways, hitting the open road with absolutely nobody behind the wheel. Many of us have ridden in a smaller car -- like a Tesla -- that has a driverless feature, but to be in a large freight truck that is maneuvering through cities and highways is a completely different ballgame. It's the future of the industry, but the future is already here. Autonomous driving technology company TuSimple was founded in San Diego in 2015 with a mission to improve the safety and efficiency of the trucking industry. TuSimple is a developer of heavy-duty, self-driving trucks and the autonomous startup has already created a freight network along the Sun Belt from Phoenix to Houston.

SHARI, HOKKAIDO – The Japanese unit of Sweden's AB Volvo on Thursday demonstrated before journalists a highly autonomous truck at a sugar factory in Hokkaido, where it moved for about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) without the involvement of a human driver. UD Trucks Corp. said the test, which began in early August, is the first level 4 experiment using a large truck in Japan. A level 4 vehicle -- a notch below being completely autonomous -- can perform all driving tasks without a driver, even in emergencies, in designated areas and routes. The truck maker has teamed up with Nippon Express Co., one of the country's major logistics firms, and the Hokuren Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives to conduct the test as part of efforts to address a severe driver shortage in the graying country. At the test site, the autonomous truck ran the distance, including about 200 meters on a public road around the factory, at a speed of 20 kph (12 mph).

San Diego-based startup TuSimple said its self-driving trucks will begin hauling mail between USPS facilities in Phoenix and Dallas to see how the nascent technology might improve delivery times and costs. A safety driver will sit behind the wheel to intervene if necessary and an engineer will ride in the passenger seat. If successful, it would mark an achievement for the autonomous driving industry and a possible solution to the driver shortage and regulatory constraints faced by freight haulers across the country. The pilot program involves five round trips, each totaling more than 2,100 miles (3,380 km) or around 45 hours of driving. It is unclear whether self-driving mail delivery will continue after the two-week pilot.

Amazon is using self-driving trucks developed by Embark to haul cargo on the I-10 interstate highway. The trucks were first noticed by a Reddit user, who uploaded images this week showing tractors emblazoned with the Embark logo and trailers painted with the Amazon Prime logo. Rather than building its own trucks, Embark integrates its self-driving systems into existing semis, and only designs the system to operate on highways, unlike competitors such as Telsa who hope their electric semi will operate on all roads. The trucks were first noticed by a Reddit user, who photographed and shared images this week showing tractors emblazoned with the Embark logo and trailers painted with the Amazon Prime logo. 'Embark has compiled many firsts for automated trucks, including driving across the country, operating in rain and fog, and navigating highway transfers,' the firm says.

Embark co-founders Alex Rodrigues, left, and Brandon Moak with their fleet of autonomous semi-trucks at the startup's operations center in Ontario, California. Ask Embark Trucks CEO Alex Rodrigues how his small autonomous tech startup can compete with giants in the space like Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo or Uber and the confident 22-year-old is ready with an answer. "We're able to move really fast," he told Forbes aboard the cab of one of Embark's sensor-laden Peterbilt semi-trucks as it barreled down the I-10 on a sunny morning, hauling a commercial load from Ontario, California, to Phoenix. As required by law a safety driver's hands are on the wheel, but the big rig is driving itself down the busy highway. "Waymo may have the conglomerate advantage' of build once, use many times," he said, because its new robot truck program has the same tech that goes into its self-driving minivans.

Last year, autonomous trucking company Embark announced that it would begin using its Level 2 autonomous semis to deliver refrigerators from Texas to California. Now, TechCrunch reports, the company has taken it a step further as one of its trucks has now completed a 2,400 mile trip from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, Florida. The trip took five days, which included scheduled rest breaks for the driver that was on board, and TechCrunch says that Embark's team is now assessing all of the trip's data. While there's no word yet on just how often the system required the driver to step in, those on board said that the truck went "hours at a time with no disengagements, and when they did occur they were usually only a few seconds," according to Embark CEO Alex Rodrigues. They instead use sensor data and machine learning and the success of this long-distance trip demonstrates that this sort of setup is adequate for highway driving.