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Autonomous tech could revolutionize freight transport as much as personal travel

The ports of Long Beach, Los Angeles and Oakland handle 40% of U.S. container traffic and converting them to all-electric equipment thats often self-driving will cost $35 billion in the next 30 years.

By John Lippert | Updated on April 25, 2016
The largest container ship to ever make port in North America unloads its cargo in the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, Calif., on Saturday, Dec. 26, 2015. (Scott Varley/ The Daily Breeze via AP, Pool)

(Bloomberg) – On one end of a dock at America’s busiest port, tractor-trailers haul containers through dense, stop-and-go traffic. Sometimes they collide. Sometimes the drivers must wait, diesel engines idling, as piles are unstacked to find the specific container they need.

A few hundred yards away, advanced algorithms select the most efficient pathway for autonomous carriers to move containers across the wharf. The four-story-high orange machines cradle their cargo, passing quietly within inches of each other, at speeds as fast as 18 miles an hour, but never touching. Self-driving cranes on tracks stack the containers and then deliver them to waiting trucks and trains with minimal human intervention.

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