Samsara rolls out new AI-powered fleet management offerings

“I've been out in the field with you and your teams learning about how this new technology can have the biggest impact on your operations,” Kiren Sekar, Samsara chief product officer, said during the conference keynote. “I can see that the potential is immense … We're making a big, big step forward today with the largest set of new product announcements we've ever made.”

New products and features

AI-enhanced DVIR process

One of the latest Samsara platform features getting an AI-powered boost is its driver vehicle inspection reports. To do so, the company used location detection and AI to allow the Samsara DVIR workflow to detect whether drivers are completing supports, and gave users the ability to dictate notes to the platform instead of typing them.

“It’s a very simple, practical application of AI that makes for an easier experience for our drivers and makes sure our vehicles are safe when they hit the road,” Sekar said.

AI-driven maintenance management

But drivers weren't the only ones who got an AI upgrade. Previously, any maintenance issues flagged by drivers in their DVIRs were added to the vehicle's status in Samsara's fleet manager dashboard.  Now, the mainteannce dashboard also offers "end-to-end" maintenance management, including AI features to help explain vehicle fault codes, provide step-by-step service instructions, and figure out which issues are most likely to violate regulations.

Additionally, fleet managers can now create work orders to resolve problems, with Samsara's system also promoting preventive maintenance by anticipating upcoming maintenance items like oil changes. Finally, fleet managers can also scan repair invoices into the system and assign each third-party line item to a line item in a fleet's system for easier bookeeping.

With these enhancements, “now we can see a complete service history filled out in just a couple of seconds with zero manual data entry,” Sekar said, showing a demonstration of Samsara’s advanced repair order process.

See also: Element, Samsara expand fleet management integration

Route planning and optimization

Additionally, Samsara can now optimize routes using uploaded data from the platform. This feature utilizes data from customer orders, historical routes, weather, truck type, traffic information, and more to help plan routes for multiple drivers at once.

This lets fleets provide their customers "with more on-time arrivals and do that with fewer vehicles, fewer hours, and less fuel," Sekar said.

Additionally, fleet managers can also add in trip paramters to help plan their routes, such as noting that orders need pallet jacks or a refrigerated unit.

Sekar shared an example where Samsara’s route planner was “able to figure out how to do all 75 orders without using my eight vehicles,” he said. “It was able to do it with just six vehicles with no overtime and just under 350 miles.”

“We love the dynamic nature of the routing solution,” Andy Yearout, Mohawk’s SVP of supply chain, said during the keynote. “The in-app, turn-by-turn directions with vehicle-specific restrictions is awesome, and the real-time traffic modeling has been really cool to play with. I'm super excited that it can take our journey even further.”

Commercial navigation for drivers

Along with top-down route management and planning, Samsara's commercial navigation offering now lets drivers find their way with routes that are designed for them and their vehicles. The company wanted drivers to “navigate their routes efficiently and do it safely so they're not bouncing between screens when you want their focus on the road,” Sekar said.

Samsara's driver app still offers many of the familiar features from Google Maps and Waze, such as audible turn-by-turn navigation. But now, it also saves route information such as road, height, weight, and hazardous materials restrictions as well as vehicle characteristics, too.

“Their app will even come preloaded with your organization's addresses and geofences, so it's incredibly easy for [drivers] to figure out where they need to go and how to get there safely,” Sekar explained.

Weather Intelligence

And to add to driver safety, Samsara now offers a Weather Intelligence solution using data from Samsara's network. Weather Intelligence provides public weather alerts in its dashboard for greater convenience, with fleet leaders able to pull dash cam view from their drivers to view real-time weather conditions.

Additionally, fleet managers can use the same trick to view real-time footage from any fleet in the Samsara network (that has allowed access, that is. These fleets have their information hidden from the network for privacy reasons). Managers can also warn drivers of upcoming weather events with customizable, audible alerts.

“We went from a radar view to public alerts to our cameras’ visibility to this collective ‘Street Sense’ network,” Sekar said. “Now we know what's happening everywhere.”

AI-driven customer communication

Lastly, Samsara has updated its messaging and communication capabilities on its platform with an agentic AI bot. The bot, powered by Happyrobot, has a human-like voice that can give personalized messages to and from drivers, sales, customer service, recruiting, the back office, and customers. 

The AI program automates external and internal messages via text, email, or phone calls, and can cover messages such as reminding new drivers about onboarding or handling payment collection calls, said Pablo Palafox, HappyRobot co-founder and CEO. It both uses a script but can also handle ambiguity, Palafox added, with fleet leaders always able to view conversations later.

Even messaging and communication with fleets’ customers have been enhanced on the Samsara platform. If a driver is late for a delivery due to a weather event or traffic delays, Samsara’s new agentic AI bot, powered by Happyrobot, can facilitate communications to the recipient of that delivery with a human-like voice and personalized communications. Sekar demonstrated it live on stage by acting as a customer receiving a call from a fleet facilitated by Happyrobot. It works like this: 

“We're helping [fleet leaders] tackle use cases and ideas that would not be possible to have done before,” Palafox said. “This is really exciting because not only are we creating efficiencies, we're also creating new opportunities for growth, which is really, really exciting.”

“This adds yet another layer in a life-like scenario that is truly adding value,” Rob McRae, Univar Solutions VP of transportation, said, speaking of Happyrobot during a press conference. “It doesn't replace, but it certainly helps to augment that ability to coach and develop on a very specific niche in a way that resonates really, really well with drivers.”