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This Year, Autonomous Trucks Will Take to the Road with No One on Board

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Re: This Year, Autonomous Trucks Will Take to the Road with No One on Board

#51

Post by notahacker »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #11

There are 3.5 million truck drivers in the US. What are 3.5 million people going to do if they're suddenly out of a job and have to change career completely? I am far from being a Trump supporter, but it would be easy for authoritarian politicians to ride to the White House on the grievances of millions of voters who had their livelihoods taken away from them by automation. Trump's promises to bring back manufacturin…

> What are 3.5 million people going to do if they're suddenly out of a job and have to change career completely?

Retire, given the average age of a truck driver is between 45 and 55 depending on which article bemoaning a shortage of truck drivers you care to read. In practice, of course, 'under limited conditions, maybe' isn't going to automate away 3.5 million jobs, and we still hire people to drive trains despite full autonomy for trains being well-established reliable tech.

Re: This Year, Autonomous Trucks Will Take to the Road with No One on Board

#52

Post by InitialLastName »

onion2k wrote: post #17
HenryKissinger wrote: post #11

There are 3.5 million truck drivers in the US. What are 3.5 million people going to do if they're suddenly out of a job and have to change career completely? I am far from being a Trump supporter, but it would be easy for authoritarian politicians to ride to the White House on the grievances of millions of voters who had their livelihoods taken away from them by automation. Trump's promises to bring back manufacturin…

What are 3.5 million people going to do if they're suddenly out of a job and have to change career completely? There's a precedent for this. Back in the early part of the 20th century the number of people working in the horse trade fell dramatically as horses were replaced with automobiles. Society survived.

Sure, society survived, but the decades after the industrial revolution/jobs realignment were wracked by insurgency, terrorism, the rise of the communist, fascist and anarchist movements, and culminated in two ridiculously destructive wars and a catastrophic depression.

I'm not saying those things will happen now too (we would never see extremist violence in this day and age, would we?) but given that history tells us that when large numbers of young-middle aged men are underemployed, you get violence, crime, and deaths of despair, perhaps we would be wise to spend some time thinking through how to help those people reestablish their connections to society.

Re: This Year, Autonomous Trucks Will Take to the Road with No One on Board

#53

Post by mc32 »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #42
intended wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one prepares for what motivated attackers think of. These trucks will be robbed. I look forward to LIDAR invisible, reflective cars in the next fast and furious installment.

They'll just insure it and be done with, like they currently do with regular trucks (which BTW have to stop every 9 hours and let the driver sleep, thus creating a very vulnerable situation wherre the truck is parked and driver is helpless). Truck robberies are just not a big problem already.

I think truck stops and middle of nowhere are different though. Truck stops have other truckers. Some have facilities and cameras.

But yeah, I think most truck jackings are targeted and often involve insiders, or occasionally a driver leaves the truck unsecured and someone drives off but that’s rare.

Re: This Year, Autonomous Trucks Will Take to the Road with No One on Board

#54

Post by BotJunkie »

blakesterz wrote: post #8

"This year"... kinda... This year there will be the first real tests run with no one in the cab. "By 2024,TuSimple plans to achieve Level 4 autonomy, meaning that its trucks will be able to operate without a human driver under limited conditions that may include time of day, weather, or premapped routes." Somehow I've managed to miss that trucks are better for this stuff not just because of the type of driving they d…

I'm the author of this. It was certainly surprising to learn that a lot of what AVs are doing right now is limited by the amount of power available to the computers. It didn't make it into the article in full, but we were told that in general more computing power means detecting and classifying more object types, tracking those objects over longer periods of time, and doing more detailed motion prediction and planning across longer time horizons. They were explicit that the power they can squeeze out of the vehicle's alternator is currently a significant limiting factor to the performance of the system.

Re: This Year, Autonomous Trucks Will Take to the Road with No One on Board

#55

Post by m3at »

Over the last five years prominent self-driving companies have consistently over promised and under-delivered. I was quite optimistic for the approach that Starsky chose (but unfortunately couldn't bring to market [1]) with autonomous segments combined with occasional remote assistance. It might not be as sexy as FSD but that's tech we can use now.

That said, if this team can make it work, power to them!

Edit: I realize this might sound dismissive. I worked on perception tasks for autonomous driving, and believe FSD can be done. I just don't feel that it's a year away, but I'd love to be wrong!

[1] https://www.therobotreport.com/starsky-robotics-co-founder-o...

Re: This Year, Autonomous Trucks Will Take to the Road with No One on Board

#56

Post by ku-man »

repentless_ape wrote: post #31
HenryKissinger wrote: post #11

There are 3.5 million truck drivers in the US. What are 3.5 million people going to do if they're suddenly out of a job and have to change career completely? I am far from being a Trump supporter, but it would be easy for authoritarian politicians to ride to the White House on the grievances of millions of voters who had their livelihoods taken away from them by automation. Trump's promises to bring back manufacturin…

I agree. Liberals and most people in the tech space believe Trump got elected due to racism. It just is not the case. He got elected by being an opportunist and latching on to the real biggest issue in America, the decades of downward pressure and degradation of lower and middle class families. There just are not enough opportunities for average or poor people to find meaningful quality work. Going to work as a cog a…

The fact that you are being downvoted is concerning. You are not making absurd claims, just stating facts.

Re: This Year, Autonomous Trucks Will Take to the Road with No One on Board

#57

Post by coding123 »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #45
TameAntelope wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're still robbing a truck...

One with a large array of cameras. So the dumbest possible target. But people rob banks, where they're also 100% guaranteed to be on camera and automatically involves an FBI investigation. As well as having a surprisingly low average haul (a few thousand dollars).

We've also normalized hiding our faces behind medical masks.

Re: This Year, Autonomous Trucks Will Take to the Road with No One on Board

#58

Post by ARandomerDude »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #41
pydry wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit more difficult with a person on board.

But not really. The person never makes a fuss (nor can realistically do so), and netiher does want to make a fuss for a simple job for one company, driving cargo owned by another company, with overall operation insured by a third company that's just going to reimburse everyone.

Key assumption: the perpetrator is willing to leave the driver alive.

Re: This Year, Autonomous Trucks Will Take to the Road with No One on Board

#59

Post by Retric »

jessaustin wrote: post #34
Retric wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the same thing human trucks do and keep driving. 7/8 is within the safety margin and 2 blowouts on the same trip is extremely rare. That’s the reason for a dual tire setup as it’s designed for this kind of redundancy.

That is not the policy of drivers who wish to retain their CDL. Gradually disintegrating radials are a hazard to everyone on the road. It isn't as though blowouts are uncorrelated, anyway.

That’s the joke. The obvious choice for the AI is to slow down without applying full breaking power, find the nearest safe spot to pull over, and then call for assistance. But, boring yet practical solutions are hardly worth discussing.
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