Teaching trucks to drive in convoy, one autonomous follower at a time.

Locomation built Autonomous Relay Convoying (ARC) technology for semi-trucks, where a human-driven lead truck is followed by a fully autonomous follower truck. The system enables the follower driver to log off and rest, while helping fleets reduce operating costs through lower driver and fuel expenses. The company estimated up to 30-33% OPEX reduction at commercialization.

Locomation was founded by Çetin Meriçli, Tekin Meriçli, and Michael George, with a team of seasoned AI and robotics professionals. The Meriçli brothers had deep Carnegie Mellon robotics experience and prior joint founding experience in robotics and ML, while the broader team had built and sold 50+ autonomous vehicles across military and commercial use cases.

Fully driverless trucking was still a decade-scale regulatory and technical challenge, but Locomation offered a practical autonomy wedge that could generate ROI much earlier. ARC targeted the two largest cost pools in trucking, driver and fuel costs, while giving fleets a path toward autonomy through customer-subsidized deployment and real-world data collection. The commercial signal was also strong: Locomation had signed pilot contracts with Wilson Logistics and another carrier, and was selected as one of only four tech providers for PACCAR's autonomous platform.