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A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

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Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#51

Post by akira2501 »

Retric wrote: post #32
akira2501 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really the vehicles. It's the loading docks, the fueling stations, the truck scales and all the rest of the infrastructure that supports trucking. All of those are going to need to have "automated truck" support as well, not to mention, when an 18 wheeler blows out a tire, you need some skills to bring the truck to a successful stop, but even more skills and equipment to effect the repair. Mining operations…

One huge advantage of a self driving truck is it can easily wait 4+ hours for a tow truck to arrive for minor repairs at little cost. Or be swapped out for another rig and hauled off for more major repairs.

If your logistics operation allows for that, sure; most do not. You want to do as much work with as little miles as is possible, so turning the trucks over quickly is important.

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#52

Post by jacalata »

jameskilton wrote: post #18
at-fates-hands wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always be leery of self driving cars. They run on software. Software is only is good as the guy programming it. What happens when the software develops a bug? Be it in the middle of rush hour traffic, or hurling down the highway at 70mph? For all of the great things we know self driving cars can potentially bring to the table, how do we account for the issue of buggy software?

Cars currently run on millions of lines of software. Airlines run on even more. Medical equipment is heavily run by software. Software already runs our lives, and worrying about the quality of the underlying software is a strawman. When was the last time a code bug took out a car or an airliner? Some industries have very stringent requirements and QA processes to make sure the code is bug free and can't kill people.…

Wasn't the Toyota braking failure recall considered to be a software bug? http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/toyota-unintende...

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#53

Post by Sophistifunk »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #47
acadien wrote: post #6

Self driving cars are going to upend this industry (eventually). Many mining companies are actively working on getting their mining equipment to be automated to do the riskier jobs without risking drivers. The same ideas apply here. Remove the driver and suddenly you have a truck that runs deliveries 24/7 and only stops to refuel and get serviced. One would hope that as the technology gets more sophisticated the numb…

The amount of information an automated vehicle would have to be able to decipher to be capable of being truly autonomous is pretty much pushing beyond the most advanced A.I. and visual learning academia has discovered today. I don't know what gps resolves to but it's definitely not down to the foot that's required for some of the hairy situations truckers encounter on the road and our visual learning technology is te…

Drone trucks would also provide a metric fuckton of training data for autonomous vehicle research. I dunno how much effect the lag would have on safety.

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#54

Post by toomuchtodo »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #47
acadien wrote: post #6

Self driving cars are going to upend this industry (eventually). Many mining companies are actively working on getting their mining equipment to be automated to do the riskier jobs without risking drivers. The same ideas apply here. Remove the driver and suddenly you have a truck that runs deliveries 24/7 and only stops to refuel and get serviced. One would hope that as the technology gets more sophisticated the numb…

The amount of information an automated vehicle would have to be able to decipher to be capable of being truly autonomous is pretty much pushing beyond the most advanced A.I. and visual learning academia has discovered today. I don't know what gps resolves to but it's definitely not down to the foot that's required for some of the hairy situations truckers encounter on the road and our visual learning technology is te…

> I don't know what gps resolves to but it's definitely not down to the foot that's required for some of the hairy situations truckers encounter on the road

Precision positioning, using correction data similar to WAAS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentation_System) but heavily localized can provide sub-centimeter positioning data. This is already in use today for agriculture (self-driving combines, with waypoints configured from the farmer's desktop at home).

> A more likely scenario in my mind is Drone trucks. Why can't a trucker head to the office drive his truck from his desk then go home at night?

UAVs can stay flying if a signal is lost, or navigate using GPS to the nearest friendly runway to autoland if they lose touch with their pilot in the Las Vegas area (where most UAVs are piloted from). Ground vehicles traveling 60+ mph do not have this option. Therefore, AI is a superior option.

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#55

Post by nickthemagicman »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #54
nickthemagicman wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of information an automated vehicle would have to be able to decipher to be capable of being truly autonomous is pretty much pushing beyond the most advanced A.I. and visual learning academia has discovered today. I don't know what gps resolves to but it's definitely not down to the foot that's required for some of the hairy situations truckers encounter on the road and our visual learning technology is te…

> I don't know what gps resolves to but it's definitely not down to the foot that's required for some of the hairy situations truckers encounter on the road Precision positioning, using correction data similar to WAAS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentation_System ) but heavily localized can provide sub-centimeter positioning data. This is already in use today for agriculture (self-driving combines, wit…

I hope they can figure it out. They haven't figured it out on trains and those travel along a predictable track.

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#56

Post by rwhitman »

Kind of fascinating that his preferred interface is physical buttons built into the cab, and a barcode scanner.

I can't imagine no one has built mobile software in this space yet, so there's got to be a reason he doesn't have a tablet sitting on his dashboard. He even built an app but curiously didn't opt to use that as his primary interface for the other functions. Says something about what a working truck driver actually needs & wants vs what a software developer would expect as the solution here.

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#57

Post by acadien »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #10
acadien wrote: post #6

Self driving cars are going to upend this industry (eventually). Many mining companies are actively working on getting their mining equipment to be automated to do the riskier jobs without risking drivers. The same ideas apply here. Remove the driver and suddenly you have a truck that runs deliveries 24/7 and only stops to refuel and get serviced. One would hope that as the technology gets more sophisticated the numb…

I've always be leery of self driving cars. They run on software. Software is only is good as the guy programming it. What happens when the software develops a bug? Be it in the middle of rush hour traffic, or hurling down the highway at 70mph? For all of the great things we know self driving cars can potentially bring to the table, how do we account for the issue of buggy software?

Have you ever ridden in a plane? Then you've relied on software to keep you alive.

Have you ever been to a hospital? Then you've relied on software to keep you alive.

Software controls everything from ovens to nuclear weapons systems. This is not a new concept.

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#58

Post by TeMPOraL »

pjc50 wrote: post #34
TeMPOraL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're warning us about an AI which could outsmart or outperform us, and lead to our demise as it pursues the goals we've encoded into it without realizing they lead to a result we don't want.

pursues the goals we've encoded into it without realizing they lead to a result we don't want. Sounds like capitalism vs. the environment there.

Why? It's not that our (humanity's) goals are bad (they're good pretty much by definition); it's that we totally suck at formalizing them.

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#59

Post by TeMPOraL »

rogerbinns wrote: post #35
TeMPOraL wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for one you can be pretty sure that self-driving car software isn't going to be written by hippie webdevs changing frameworks every other week. Companies and programmers that tend to work on this kind of software have pretty good track records - we don't see planes falling out of the sky or medical machines randomly killing patients all the time. Uou're going to have an app store for your car drivers.

Cars have it simpler than planes etc too. In particular they can always fail safe by stopping - something that isn't applicable to planes. Other complexities aren't present either due to the 2d nature of roads - for example car software doesn't have to worry about stalls, coffin corner or similar. I believe that self driving cars will primarily be owned by companies with fleets of them, rather than individual ownersh…

> It doesn't make sense to have them sitting idle 23 hours a day.

Well, I agree. That's why I expect that, along human drivers, the very concept of car ownership will disappear. It's much more efficient to have those cars available on call; they can serve someone else while you're not using them, and they can be parked&recharged at night with much better space-efficiency than cars are parked today.

Re: A trucker trying to hack the haulage industry [video]

#60

Post by Scoundreller »

akira2501 wrote: post #50
Scoundreller wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of those are going to need to have "automated truck" support as well Do they? The trucks don't need to automate 100% of tasks for initial implementation, the first ones will be driverless in-between cities (or driver-nap in-between cities) with manned fueling, loading docks, scales, etc. This will require some changes, but I don't think it will be too much of an issue to move toward full-serve gasoline service…

> Do they? If you want them to be economically competitive, then yes. The largest current expense is the driver salary, mostly due to the low quality of the working conditions and extended stays away from your "home." If you're still carting people around in the truck, then you will have a difficult time competing with large personnel and technology expenses. What I'm trying to suggest is that a fully automated natio…

> If you're still carting people around in the truck, then you will have a difficult time competing with large personnel and technology expenses.

The response would be to have people fixed at these scales/fuel stops/docks that handle what the driver would have been doing.

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