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The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

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Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#31

Post by jacalata »

enraged_camel wrote: post #22
HorizonXP wrote: post #2

My father is a truck driver. He made his living driving vehicles and doing heavy lifting and menial work. Truck driving is just the latest evolution in his "career" and I'm ever grateful to him for battering his body in various ways to ensure I had every opportunity available to myself. We talk a lot about his job. It's not fun. He works long hours, a lot of it is mundane driving, and he sits idle a lot of the time.…

>>Trucks are way more complicated to drive. An Australian friend of mine told me that the trucks that carry load from Australian mining fields are almost fully automated, and have been for a while now. So perhaps it's not that complicated?

They may have been thinking of trucks within the mine site, which is still quite new? (http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-18/rio-tinto-opens-wor...). I'm pretty sure we don't have any automated trucks on Australian roads.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#32

Post by a3n »

> Dealing with gear changes, airbrakes, load shifting, other vehicles that will inevitably cut you off, and much more.

Awhile back there was a post about the early experience of a young and enthusiastic programmer. The take away phrase, in response to someone sending nonsense input, was "Some people just want to watch the world burn."

I can see assholes trying to make sure that an automated truck can't change lanes, or get to the exit it needs to reach, etc.

I myself have at times intentionally walked too close to the robotic carts that move supplies to workstations at my work, just to hear them stop and beep for a few seconds.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#33

Post by tomlock »

enraged_camel wrote: post #22
HorizonXP wrote: post #2

My father is a truck driver. He made his living driving vehicles and doing heavy lifting and menial work. Truck driving is just the latest evolution in his "career" and I'm ever grateful to him for battering his body in various ways to ensure I had every opportunity available to myself. We talk a lot about his job. It's not fun. He works long hours, a lot of it is mundane driving, and he sits idle a lot of the time.…

>>Trucks are way more complicated to drive. An Australian friend of mine told me that the trucks that carry load from Australian mining fields are almost fully automated, and have been for a while now. So perhaps it's not that complicated?

This is mostly internal to mine sites, and the areas serviced have restricted or no public traffic.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#34

Post by wheresmypasswd »

jakelarkin wrote: post #20

navigating high-grade descents are the wrinkle - truck air brakes seem very finicky. But I think there's no reason why long, sparse, flat freeway sections could not be run by automated cabs relatively soon, for example CA-I5 from Tejon Ranch to Stockton, or the I80 between Chicago outskirts and somewhere in Wyoming.

Presumably we don't spend $10k/trunk on better brakes because humans can deal without them. But if that was what's needed to make self-driving work, the economics could support it. Electric regenerative breaking would do nicely.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#35

Post by JulianMorrison »

HorizonXP wrote: post #2

My father is a truck driver. He made his living driving vehicles and doing heavy lifting and menial work. Truck driving is just the latest evolution in his "career" and I'm ever grateful to him for battering his body in various ways to ensure I had every opportunity available to myself. We talk a lot about his job. It's not fun. He works long hours, a lot of it is mundane driving, and he sits idle a lot of the time.…

Are you sure they're more complicated for computers? Because some stuff that strains humans, like 360° attention and complicated sequential activities, computers can do with ease. Also computers are not limited to having senses inside the cab. Load shifting? BigDog is an example of computers figuring how to balance a shifting load. Google cars handle being cut off (most of the time).

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#36

Post by martin1975 »

HorizonXP wrote: post #18
tempestn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article actually mentions that initially we will need human drivers to get the trucks on and off the freeway: "We still need to create on- and off-ramps so human drivers can bring trucks to the freeways where highway autopilot can take over."

I was referring more to the inner-city manoeuvring, and within loading/unloading zones. Getting a trailer lined up with the loading dock isn't an easy task at all. It can be automated, but it's the variability between load length, weight, and the loading dock's surroundings that make it difficult. A comment below talked about harbour pilots. That seems like a great idea.

Lexus automated the most hated driving maneuver for all car drivers - parallel parking, and Google's had decent success w/their self driving Prii fleet... it's hard, safety would be the #1 concern, but w/enough human brainpower and some decent hard realtime OS-es, it should be more than doable.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#37

Post by imgabe »

HorizonXP wrote: post #2

My father is a truck driver. He made his living driving vehicles and doing heavy lifting and menial work. Truck driving is just the latest evolution in his "career" and I'm ever grateful to him for battering his body in various ways to ensure I had every opportunity available to myself. We talk a lot about his job. It's not fun. He works long hours, a lot of it is mundane driving, and he sits idle a lot of the time.…

I think it could help that loading docks could be highly integrated with the truck systems. Backing in to the place where you unload is complicated, but the owners would be willing to invest in putting in sensors, special paint, whatever else is necessary to make that as automated and error free as possible.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#38

Post by sandGorgon »

I'm thinking about India where politicians are clashing over train and road as we speak. For a country building new infrastructure, I wonder which one is more viable?

This has been a subject of long debate in India - autonomous cars are fairly useless in Indian cities. At the scale of transportation needed, nothing other than mass transportation (subways,etc) makes sense with last mile connectivity.

The same question exists for freight - should we construct trains or trucks? Taking into account offloading cost - which one is more efficient? I think people overestimate the complexity of shipping items with time guarantees. A hub and spoke model works great here - but what is doing the actual long haul?

And people don't understand the scale at which countries like India or China need to operate. The transportation needs of all of Europe are dwarfed by how much needs to be moved (quickly and economically ) in India.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#39

Post by wheresmypasswd »

samcheng wrote: post #8
HorizonXP wrote: post #2

My father is a truck driver. He made his living driving vehicles and doing heavy lifting and menial work. Truck driving is just the latest evolution in his "career" and I'm ever grateful to him for battering his body in various ways to ensure I had every opportunity available to myself. We talk a lot about his job. It's not fun. He works long hours, a lot of it is mundane driving, and he sits idle a lot of the time.…

The geometry- and mechanically- related tasks seem like they would be ripe for automation. For example, the trailer reversing problem is related to the inverted pendulum problem, which is easily solvable by automated systems. The judgement for when to stop with an unsafe load and wayfinding at the last 100 yards of a route are indeed tasks that I'd prefer to leave to a human for the time being. Maybe we'll have 'dock…

Build a robot that balances this broomstick was a sophomore-level engineering course at my university. xD

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#40

Post by kilroy123 »

My friend is some kind of logistics manager for a trucking company. He literally manages dozens of trucks and truck drivers daily.

He says, it's so ridiculous, how far away we are from automatting truck driving. There is a lot of manual work for loading and off-loading rigs. Plus there is driving in every single possible driving condition possible, around the world.

He said, he could see an auto-pilot system being installed in trucks in the next 10 years, but the rest is all manually done.

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