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Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Head to a farm

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Re: Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Head to a farm

#21
> Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles?

Actually, no.

There are many things I'm tired of waiting for in industrial manufacturing and engineering, and driverless vehicles are not really on that list. Even if I think about transportation challenges only, the need for human drivers is not even on my top 10 list of issues.

Re: Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Head to a farm

#23

Totally different set of problems. An autonomous tractor is more like a big CNC machine. Positioning is easy and very little intelligence is required.

Once the tractor is out in the field it can be automated rather easily yes. The tech makes sense on big farms with flat fields and no wild animals. Woods and non-flat terrain, different story.

Re: Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Head to a farm

#26
Russian company cognitive pilot has been working on the same technology. Their approach was to shift the responsibility regarding some functions of a machine and to increase the performance of harvest and to make the driver's job easier.

https://habr.com/ru/company/cognitivepilot/blog/514678/ https://habr.com/ru/company/cognitivepilot/blog/515432/

Re: Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Head to a farm

#27

Heathrow Terminal 5 has autonomous pods to ferry people between the carpark and terminal. It seems you can go a long way by constraining the requirements. https://londonist.com/2014/09/a-ride-on-heathrows-self-drivi...

A lot further than self driving cars with PRT in fact.

3D rail routing, factory pallet->shop direct delivery, 300mph point to point access, easy emergency and disabled access, no batteries to manufacture, no real land use issues (just poles in the ground for hanging systems), fast infra build out using prefabricated track, simultaneous electricity, transport, power (solar, on the top of hanging rails) and telecoms build out with the rail infra. Fully decentralised infra once several tracks are interconnected.

Re: Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Head to a farm

#28
post #26

Russian company cognitive pilot has been working on the same technology. Their approach was to shift the responsibility regarding some functions of a machine and to increase the performance of harvest and to make the driver's job easier. https://habr.com/ru/company/cognitivepilot/blog/514678/ https://habr.com/ru/company/cognitivepilot/blog/515432/

Without using AI there have been substantial improvements already - I was home for harvest on my family farm last year, driving a JD S970 (last time I drove was a CTSII about 10 years ago). 40 ft front, gps auto steer, radar controlled front height - cognitively it was 10% of what it was 15 years ago.

My uncle had a new X series with a 60ft front that also slaves the chaser bin for unloading so you’re basically automating the unloading as well - it’s wild.

Our country is all to undulating I think to be even close to being fully autonomous anytime in the next 2.0 years but it will be interesting to see how this all develops.

10 years ago the talk of remote tractors was to have one lead manned machine with 1-3 ‘slaves’ machines following behind so the one operator can manage a much bigger area, it’s interesting that this doesn’t seem to be the way they’re going

Re: Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Head to a farm

#29
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the point of recreational boating that you drive it yourself? Like with turning the meats when barbecuing? We daddies need something important to do. :)

You arent allowed to drink and drive and when people go on a boating holiday that becomes inevitable. Besides it can get quite boring pottering around at 3-6mph on a canal or river, the novelty can wear off quickly especially if its raining and you have to stand at the back steering a canal boat. So why not have some sort of autonomous guidance system? At least it can become more pleasant in bad weather and opens up…

You’re right. At least the option to turn on autopilot would certainly be nice to have. It doesn’t have to be one way or the other.

Re: R/C autonomous toys. I think these already exist. You can build them yourself from a raspberry pi. And I think there are also kits for autonomous robots. Haven’t heard of racing cars, but small robot creatures for indoor use. I don’t remember any names of brands.

Re: Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Head to a farm

#30

I'm really surprised autonomous recreational boats are not something yet. There are plenty of canals and rivers with day boats and holiday boats going about slowly around the 3-6mph speed limits which would make ideal candidates as this is a very limited contained environment. At the very least the insurance companies could be insisting on some sort of crash avoidance guidance/control system to avoid boats from getti…

Canals (or at least narrow, shallow British-style canals) would be a surprisingly difficult environment to design an automated system for. Vessels whose awkward handling is heavily affected by highly variable wind, water depth and proximity to banks, overhanging branches, floating rubbish and interactions with other boats whose unpredictable behaviour is usually understood by talking to them. Given the delayed response because 20 ton boats have massive inertia, and can be blown sideways even when brought to a halt I'm not even sure reliable crash avoidance is possible. Plus the real hard work (and risk to humans) is the mooring and the locks.

Certainly a semi or mostly automated system would have its advantages, but not necessarily enough to justify the costs of actually training it for a very small niche market dominated by people proud of using obsolete tech.

Autonomous shipping on the other hand...

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