Imagine Stephen King’s “Trucks” meets “Short Circuit”… But hopefully with a lot less blood and a bit more reliability. That’s what’s happening on the M6 motorway, the UK’s longest and busiest motorway, dubbed the “Backbone of Britain,” later this year.

The UK Chamber of Commerce estimates that £1.7 million-worth of goods and commerce flow down the M6 every hour.

#-ad_banner-#But automated “platoons” of semi trucks could push that figure much higher, while cutting costs significantly.

Here’s how it works. The lead truck will be driven by a person, while a convoy of nine other semis will be piloted autonomously, each following the lead truck, drafting in the slipstream, and saving as much as 15% in fuel consumption.

Daimler AG (XETRA: DAI) is already testing automated tractor trailers in Germany, and its vehicles will likely be used in the UK program and on U.S. roads.

Indeed, its Freightliner Inspiration Truck is the first — and only — truck of its kind to be granted a license for road use in the United States. The Inspiration is chock full of radar, sensors, cameras and other equipment that control speed, distance from other vehicles and lane position. It can sense traffic and road conditions, and even adjusts for wind.

All of this technology frees the driver up to perform other tasks, like routing, inventory and, yes, resting. In tests performed in Germany, drivers who operated the Inspiration claimed to feel 25% less tired than when fully driving a regular semi.

And that’s one of Daimler’s main goals, to make trucking easier.

The truck debuted to great fanfare in Las Vegas, renting out the Hoover Dam and putting on a record-setting light show late last year, but amongst the flurry of news surrounding Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) eating up airwaves, this truck has been stuck under the radar.

Is that about to change? The UK announcement last week suggested that “platoon” trials will start later this year, and the country’s Department of Transportation wants to lead the way in testing these trucks.
If UK Chancellor Georg Osborne approves funding for the project in his budget speech this week, autonomous trucks could start rumbling down the M6 in less than nine months.

DAI is the obvious choice for investment in this space, but it’s not a sure bet.

That’s because even if everything goes right, the UK project is just a pilot program. Experts in this space predict it could take ten years to see autonomous trucks on the road in a commercially significant way.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities.

I dug a bit deeper to take a look at individual parts makers for sensors, cameras and radar. These are the parts that are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in cars across the spectrum, human-driven, and semi-autonomous options, like parking assistance and lane departures.

Source: EDN Network

I found that some familiar electronics names are in the mix, like Kyocera Corp. (NYSE: KYO) and Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE). In this sector, these two focus mainly on cameras. But another well-known company targets radar and other vision-based sensors.
    
Analog Devices, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADI) manufactures sensors, sensor interfaces and RF technologies that are used in such processes as rollover and stability control, airbag and crash sensing, radar and vision driver assistance and other types of applications.

In other words, the very sensors and equipment that are already being used in this generation of vehicles, with the capability of expanding the technology into the next generation.

And the next generation of sensors will be a very lucrative business. The automotive semiconductor market is expected to be valued at $48.78 billion by 2022, according to a new MarketsandMarkets report.

ADI was upgraded to “buy” by Drexel Hamilton in early March, which reflects the significant bump in earnings expected in FY2017, ending October 2017.

Earnings are expected to grow 14.2% that year, and then 10% a year for the next five years. That might be why ambitious analysts are targeting a high share price of $72, a gain of 28.3% from current prices.

Risks to Consider: The auto market fluctuates with the global economy. While demand for cars is expected to grow, particularly in Asia, economic factors could slow down this potential growth, which would definitely impact the niche sensors sector.

That said, as these sensors can also provide fuel and driving efficiencies, many “optional” processes may become standard in the coming years.

Action to Take: While Daimler is busy testing its truck on roads all over the world, investors can jump into the sensor business by picking up shares of Analog Devices, Inc. for a potential gain of 28.3%. This gain would mean shares would break to an all-time high, and could start major push into new territory.

P.S. Elon Musk’s $1 trillion ‘side project’ will shock you. It’s so disruptive, it could kill coal, OPEC and fracking… and send one little-known sector on a 59,159% revenue explosion. Get the full story here.