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Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

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Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#141

Post by ThrustVectoring »

ktpsns wrote: post #92

The funny thing in this US-centric view is that we have such a cargo since a century where trains play the role of "self-driving cargo". In europe, the decline of cargo on tracks (trains) is also partially owed to subsidiation of automobile traffic and highway expansions. It is a pity, because from the raw numbers trains are much less expensive then tracks.

You get advantages from trucks in terms of flexibility and lower inventory due to faster shipment times. It doesn't make sense for things like coal, sure, but there's very real advantages you gain through shipping by truck instead of rail.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#142

Post by EggsOnToast »

knz wrote: post #27
nopinsight wrote: post #8

For those concerned with jobs to be eliminated, it might not be as big a problem as we think for the trucking industry. "Over the next 10 years, he said, we need to attract almost 900,000 new people to the industry. Demographics is a big part of the problem. ATA’s research arm, the American Transportation Research Institute, recently updated its demographic data on drivers and found some 57% of drivers are 45 or olde…

Is the issue a lack of jobs or a lack of jobs that pay enough to prosper in our society? BLS has the mean annual income for a truck driver at $43,000 ( https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes533032.htm ) versus ~ $22,000 for a personal care assistant ( https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/home-health-aides-and-per... ). That's a huge difference, especially in a country with the health care system we have.

Those numbers make sense at a glance. A truck driver, despite the popular image, more closely resembles specialized work than un-specialized. There are specific skill and documentation requirements to become a Truck driver. The healthcare work you linked to just requires a high-school diploma and no certs, if it's a job like caring for the elderly then the main factor driving up the wage is a shortage of people willing to deal with the challenges of working with an elderly person which can include rude or mentally ill families/customers, excrement, and being comfortable cleaning and/or bathing another human being.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#143

Post by conanbatt »

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #121

What really bothered me at the end of the commerical was the fact that the person could be in home in time for dinner. Unless we have some form of UBI, where is that person going to source the funds to pay for his dinner?

What I find truly interesting of this thinking is that technological advances in the future are cataclysmic, but in the past are necessary.

It never becomes something like "lets destroy all the farming machinery, so we create more jobs plowing the land".

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#144

Post by PeterisP »

rconti wrote: post #97

Can't we get this technology nailed so well that hopping in a self-driving car for your day-to-day errands is something you do without a second thought, BEFORE we start sending out 30 ton missiles as beta tests?

Obviously not, since carrying humans on arbitrary dynamic routes for day-to-day errands is a much harder task than driving a known route between two fixed, well mapped points, and navigating remote roads/streets is more difficult than driving on highways.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#145

Post by nitwit005 »

nopinsight wrote: post #8

For those concerned with jobs to be eliminated, it might not be as big a problem as we think for the trucking industry. "Over the next 10 years, he said, we need to attract almost 900,000 new people to the industry. Demographics is a big part of the problem. ATA’s research arm, the American Transportation Research Institute, recently updated its demographic data on drivers and found some 57% of drivers are 45 or olde…

> "Over the next 10 years, he said, we need to attract almost 900,000 new people to the industry.

The pay of truckers has, in inflation adjusted terms, shrunk by more than half since the 80s. They mostly need to bring in more people because their turnover is ridiculous.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#146

Post by petra »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #31

I assume these self-driving trucks still have a human driver in them. So, which exact parts are self-driving? Is it like Tesla's autopilot where it does lane following, cruise control and keeping the distance on highways?

It's not self driving. But it may be One of the first places that get paid real money(lets say UBER'S commission) for testing self-driving.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#147

Post by hanbura »

iak8god wrote: post #135
LethargicStud wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, the idea of stifling innovation to "preserve jobs" is harmful to society. Upon choosing a career, you should consider the longevity of that career. Some people will still pick wrong for a multitude of reasons. Hopefully, those people can pivot. It is unreasonable to hold the entire population back to continue employing those in a specific field. If we consistently did that, we'd be in the stone age and our…

> Upon choosing a career, you should consider the longevity of that career. Isn't it lucky we humans are so very good at predicting the future!? When I was taking computer vision courses little more than a decade ago, self driving cars were pure science fiction. Part of me hopes software development is the next job we automate away, just so everyone in forums like this who are so impressed with their own excellent li…

>Part of me hopes software development is the next job we automate away

We are hard at work automating software development. Thanks to massive advances in programming language design, IDEs, the invention of module systems in combination with the massive success of OSS in that space and the proliferation of massive frameworks, something that took a year of work two decades ago is now at best a weekend project of a much less skilled person.

The thing that keeps us all employed is the incredibly elastic demand. And of course that the work to find and describe requirements is unlikely to be automated away anytime soon (and already often takes more time than actual implementation)

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#148

Post by PeterisP »

cgb223 wrote: post #94
lonelyw0lf wrote: post #42

The video ad is so crazy -- we still need a human to lock/unlock the cargo?? and its good for the truckers because they can go home early to their family?? The first part can be trivially automated and the second is just stupid. Truckers get paid per hour of work, less work == less money. AI-self-driving has arrived but to make the transition look "humane" as in the AD is crazy. Almost insults the intelligence of the…

Having grown up in an area where becoming a trucker is a common enough career path, I can tell you that the hours of work thing (which is really miles per work, but they correlate) lands some truckers in some sketchy situations Many of my friends have told me they take those gas station "energy supplements" so they can stay up for 2-3 straight days to log more hours and make the trip. Thats probably not healthy for t…

If trucks could drive themselves with just rarely needing someone to intervene in tricky situations (and not immediately - e.g. the "passenger driver might have to wake up) then it's going to be much, much cheaper to have the "tricky situation intervention" done remotely by a having a single on-shift driver ready to handle tricky situations for a hundred trucks.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#149

Post by heisenbit »

> Uber has a video depicting this journey, which took place staring in then midwest and then via short haul to Sanders, Arizona, where it was loaded onto an autonomous truck and then transferred to Topock, Arizona, where it made the switch to another human-driven vehicle. This is a big step towards commercialization of Uber’s autonomous truck tech, and it seems like it puts it ahead of some competitors who want to do similar things, including Embark trucking. It’s also the first we’ve heard about Uber’s self-driving truck business in a little while, so it’s good to see Uber’s continuing to make progress and devote attention to this issue.

Uber's main line of business i.e. on demand car transportation is loosing money. They tell a story that they fix it with self driving cars which incidentally would require gigantic additional funding. Now they have expanded into self driving trucks that do already some services with some capacity in the name of their own surely significant trucking business for some customers that call for them through their app. This is the real deal, I know because there is a video.

Musk heaps one money loosing business over the other but at least they all make sense and are different. With Uber it was doubling down and now tripling down. Not impressed.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#150

Post by PeterisP »

cgb223 wrote: post #94
lonelyw0lf wrote: post #42

The video ad is so crazy -- we still need a human to lock/unlock the cargo?? and its good for the truckers because they can go home early to their family?? The first part can be trivially automated and the second is just stupid. Truckers get paid per hour of work, less work == less money. AI-self-driving has arrived but to make the transition look "humane" as in the AD is crazy. Almost insults the intelligence of the…

Having grown up in an area where becoming a trucker is a common enough career path, I can tell you that the hours of work thing (which is really miles per work, but they correlate) lands some truckers in some sketchy situations Many of my friends have told me they take those gas station "energy supplements" so they can stay up for 2-3 straight days to log more hours and make the trip. Thats probably not healthy for t…

"so they can stay up for 2-3 straight days to log more hours and make the trip" - by the way, is that legal and actually happening in USA? Sounds like a horrible risk to everyone else on the road; in EU you're not getting on the road without a tachograph recording your driving & rest times, and driving more than 9-10 hours per day (including at least 9 hours uninterrupted "rest" eash day) would result in massive fines; if the cargo is urgent and you need to drive on then it's literally cheaper (as in, it actually happens) to fly in a replacement driver with a low-cost airline than to risk the fines.
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