A pilot program between Ryder and Terminal Industries has shown promise in its efforts to automate and optimize warehouse yards by eliminating manual processes.

Terminal Industries supplies the AI platform to digitize yard operations, using computer vision technology to automatically index and analyze trucks and trailers flowing in and out of the warehouse yard.

The program has been in place since January at a Ryder e-commerce fulfillment center in City of Industry, Calif. It has processed more than 10,000 truck detections, achieving 99% accuracy in capturing licence plates and DOT numbers, the companies said in a recent news release.

“We have not seen this kind of accuracy with computer-vision technology previously, so this is a significant milestone in the race to modernize what is currently a very manual and inefficient process across the industry,” says Karen Jones, chief marketing officer and head of new product development at Ryder.

“It’s one thing to build a text-recognition algorithm that works on static objects or in an academic setting, but it’s quite another in the real world, where we’re dealing with obscured license plates, hand-written DOT numbers, inclement weather, and any number of scenarios that affect visibility for cameras.”

“We are building the language of the yard,” adds Max Constant, chief executive officer of Terminal. “Ryder’s data is a gold mine for training. Most people believe more data is the answer, but it’s really about having the right data – the noisy, real-world data. That’s a major key to developing our core technology, so we can leverage this powerful tool – not just for one use case but across a broad range of applications to optimize yard operations in ways not yet evident in the industry.”

The project aims to eliminate delays related to the manual recording of licence plates, DOT and trailer numbers, which can create bottlenecks and result in delays.

The two companies launched a second pilot in July in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area. Ryder has also invested US$31 million into Terminal’s seed funding, through its venture capital fund RyderVentures.