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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

#101

Post by graycat »

bitwize wrote: post #46
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.

Truck air brakes are finicky because they are mechanically designed to distribute brake pressure evenly across the wheels in response to one input -- pressure from the driver's foot on the brake pedal. An automated cab could communicate more information: desired speed, tolerance, required stopping distance, and general vehicle stability info, and a microcontroller at each wheel could combine that with sensor info abo…

The old technique was, at a wheel, hit the brakes really hard to stop the wheel rotating as fast as possible, hopefully less than one second, and then fully release the brake. Then the stopped wheel starts sliding and, then, starts rotating again, while still sliding some, until it is full rotating again, and then hit the brakes again. So, the technique is automatically sensitive to load, tread on the tires, traction on the road, etc. So, don't want all the wheels stopped at the same time. Then on an 18 wheel truck, should still be able to maintain directional control.

Of course, there is a lot that could be done, but most of that has one thing in common -- money, for the engineering, manufacturing, original purchase, in-service monitoring, problem detection, problem diagnosis, and repair. Money.

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

#102

Post by niels_olson »

I think one thing people don't understand is that if truck drivers are out of the equation, a huge amount of cargo will go back to rail. Roadways will clean up nicely. And if rail becomes more efficient, we might start building more rail. And put more passenger trains on said rail. That would empty out the roads even more.

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

#103

Post by Homunculiheaded »

A very useful visual to add next to this is "The Most Common Job In Every State"[0] map from NPR's Planet Money. As soon as I was aware of the research in autonomous driving I was pretty confident trucking would be the first industry hit. Until I saw that map I had no sense of how major of a disruption this could be.

[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...

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

#104

Post by peterwwillis »

ctvo wrote: post #30
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. Once they're up to cruising speed, they're easy. But it's everything leading up to that point which is hard. Dealing with gear changes, airbrakes, load shifting, other vehicles that will inevitably cut you off, and much more. The mechanical aspects of controlling a large truck and accounting for the variables is probably the easiest part of the problem. Things involving hum…

Yes. Truckers have to deal with a sort of standard "road safety dilemma" all the time, which can be boiled down to this:

A trucker is driving a 40 ton truck at 65mph. A passenger car with a family of four cuts in front of it, and the distance is closing fast.

A passenger car takes roughly 315 feet to come to a complete stop. A fully loaded truck takes 525 feet. The trucker now has to make a decision.

A) Do I slam on the brakes and keep going straight, and completely obliterate the car in front of me and the family inside it?

B) Do I cut off to the side, running over the rail, flipping the truck, killing myself, and possibly any other vehicles or pedestrians around, behind, or coming in the opposite direction of me?

The robot trucker could of course decide on B), but there are unknown variables about the extent of the resulting damage. This risk increases with merging between lanes or on/off ramps both by passenger vehicles, the truck itself, and motorcycles.

A dedicated lane would make this fantastically safer, but who will pay for it?

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

#105

Post by krinchan »

I keep saying this over and over and over to my more "the market will figure it out" co-workers and I just can't seem to get through to them.

This is literally more than 20% unemployment in less than 5 years.

Society will either crumble or completely change how it views unemployment.

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

#106

Post by WalterBright »

jessriedel wrote: post #88
WalterBright wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't have one. I just recall reading years ago that the fatigue damage cause by trucks loaded to the legal weight limit was 9,000 times that of a passenger car (and trucks are often overloaded). The flexing of the roadbed causes it to crumble away after a while. You can feel the roadbed go down when a truck passes. The main damage passenger cars do is erosion from snow tires.

I was able to find this from the Congressional Budget Office > Estimates of pavement damage by trucks, the largest per-mile external cost of truck use, range from about 5 to 55 cents per mile depending on the weight of the truck, the number of axles over which its weight is distributed, and where it operates.... https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th-congress-2011-... The fuel tax is 30 cents/gallon of diesel,…

20 to 30% is quite a bit. And road repairs are only part of the cost subsidy to trucks. Property taxes are assessed on the tracks, but not on the highways, for another.

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

#107

Post by AdamTReineke »

niels_olson wrote: post #102

I think one thing people don't understand is that if truck drivers are out of the equation, a huge amount of cargo will go back to rail. Roadways will clean up nicely. And if rail becomes more efficient, we might start building more rail. And put more passenger trains on said rail. That would empty out the roads even more.

The trucks will still be there, just without their drivers.

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

#108

Post by fernly »

Where will an autonomous truck (AT) refuel? On US highways, fuel stations are not "full service", the driver is expected to operate the fuel filling and pay. So will some stations provide attendants to fuel ATs?

If there is resentment against the ATs -- and that is just about a certainty -- there will be cases of resentful attendants shorting the fuel delivery, or even sabotaging trucks (water/sugar in the tank).

So, maybe the trucking companies hire min-wage attendants to work the pumps at designated stations along the routes. The stations that permit AT refueling would be obvious targets for Luddite retaliation.

Actually, the ATs themselves would be pretty obvious targets for vandalism. They would be easy to identify -- driving at 45mph in platoons, as described in the article -- and unprotected along the vast open stretches of US interstate highways. I would expect many, many ATs would arrive at their destinations with rifle bullet holes in them.

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

#109

Post by tyingq »

thedogeye wrote: post #55
n0tsofastpal wrote: post #47

It's a super interesting subject, but I don't really buy the argument that this will drive down costs for the consumer. Never mind that whole better standard of living line...that's just cheerleading. Companies have shown over and over again in the last two decades that they are capable of absorbing those new profits from efficiencies.

How much did you pay for the super computer in your hand?

How much did UPS/Fedex shipping prices go down when fuel prices dropped? (hint, they went up).

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

#110

Post by seansmccullough »

arebop wrote: post #78
Cshelton wrote: post #64

How about we automate rail traffic first. They are close...but the electronic system is still so far behind. They keep having to push back the requiremen.

I think there's less incentive for automating trains because of the cargo:driver ratio. The cost of the human at the helm is a much smaller portion of the cost of operating the railroad.

Totally agree, they only need a handful of people to operate a multi-mile long train.
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