How private yards became autonomous trucking’s most promising frontier

“At that time we could already engage hours 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 operations occur on private property, the environment is tightly controlled. There are no public road users, speeds are lower, everyone wear safety vest, and the vehicle can always be brought to a safe stop when needed.”

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 applications, when you pull forward, the trailer naturally follows the truck.” Zhao explained. “But when you back up, it behaves like an inverted pendulum—an inherently unstable system. Small errors can quickly grow, so it requires continuous and precise control.”

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 the trailer’s behavior,” Zhao said. “Before we reach the parking maneuver—during the normal driving that happens beforehand—we’ve already built a highly accurate understanding of the trailer’s behavior. That allows us to precisely control the trailer when it comes time to back into a parking spot.”

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 can easily take a few 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 how it handles this scenario or that scenario, 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.”