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Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

kevinchen.co

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Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#131

Post by NullHypothesist »

tempest_ wrote: post #104
Edman274 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I should clarify that my response is in anticipation of the comment sections I often see on hackernews about self driving cars, rather than arguments from the self driving car companies themselves. Waymo won't say "we're slightly better than people, let us on your roadways" but I feel like every time I see something about self driving on Hackernews there's a handful of commenters taking the hyper-utilitarian vi…

Also isnt waymo only operating in Pheonix and California where the weather is always nice? What happens when it snows ?

They don't operate in snow now, but everybody was like "This is great, but it doesn't work in the rain!" this time last year. I've now taken many flawless rides in outright downpours in SF. It might take a year or two, but I have no doubt snow will be something that is a non-issue in the near future.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#132

Post by karaterobot »

> No guarantee of a timely response from remote operators or backend services.

> Therefore, all safety-critical decisions must be made by the onboard computer alone.

Why is the requirement that all safety-critical decisions must be made on board, versus the seemingly-simplifying assumption that only some or most decisions would have to be made on board, because a remote operator or backend service could be available a lot of the time? It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to have a single operator remotely monitoring multiple vehicles that are autonomous under ideal conditions (driving along a straight road in good weather) and then taking over when necessary. Let's say you would only use such a system for major routes with solid satellite visibility, not last-mile routes hauling heavy equipment on a dirt road in the boonies, or something like that. Maybe this wouldn't work, but it's not obviously ridiculous to me, so I wonder why he just starts out saying the truck most be fully autonomous with no human ever in the loop.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#133

Post by CSMastermind »

I've begun thinking that human wages are a good indication of how hard a job will be to automate.

It turns out we already have general intelligence (producible in about 16 years) available on demand. And so, the market is already a good indication of which jobs are easy and hard to automate for general intelligence.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#134

Post by Ekaros »

hinkley wrote: post #49
Edman274 wrote: post #26

I often see logic along the lines of "if autonomous vehicles are safer than people, then let's deploy them" and that logic straight-up does not fly in the real world. In the real world, among the techno-pessimists, that is an outrageously low bar. Most accidents and deaths that happen because of human drivers occur because the driver was doing something illegal, which means the bar that we have for even humans is hig…

The bar for commercial driving should definitely be higher than for “civilian”. But I think the bar for civilian is also woefully out of date now. Giant trucks should require a commercial license. Make it easier to get than a delivery truck license, but weed out the soccer moms and bring back the station wagon. If you’re a professional tree trimmer, general contractor, or a forester, renewing your license is on the c…

Pretty much done in Europe.

First of all for vehicles with total mass of above 3500 kg you need extra license. And also separate one if you have a trailer. This is get it and keep it, until certain age. But good enough often.

And then in general commercial operations also need more licensing. Which needs to be renewed after certain time.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#135

Post by chmod600 »

ScoobleDoodle wrote: post #87
nativeit wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society is literally willing to let truck drivers die to maintain shipping times. See the responses during the height of COVID-19, or even just the demands placed on every day operators cross-referenced with their average health and mortality rates. Our treatment of truck drivers is already subhuman, I don’t think we’re likely to extend a lot of understanding to the robots.

That might be more a result of capitalist motivations i.e: funnel money to the share holders / owners and C-suite and away from workers. Which is much more direct than someone buying legos or a stove. We can either legislate that or they need an effective union.

"That might be more a result of capitalist motivations"

People wanting to get more stuff faster is a universal motivation not limited (in theory or in practice) to capitalism. To the extent that anyone is exploited, that's just selfishness, again a universal motivation.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#136

Post by bluescrn »

photonbeam wrote: post #17
bradley13 wrote: post #16

Another issue will be piracy. Stop the truck using a couple of vehicles, cut open the lock on the rear doors, and loot. Pick an isolated stretch of toad, and the pirates will be gone before anyone can respond.

You can already do that, the driver wont defend the payload

If there's no driver, there's no need to be armed, so instead of an armed robbery charge, the risk is just a theft charge. In a world where people defend shoplifting.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#138

Post by chefkoch »

jmull wrote: post #80
Havoc wrote: post #69

Yes trucks slow down slower than cars but that's just physics. You've got the exact same problem with humans driving under say rainy or foggy conditions. If anything driverless helps dramatically on this front. If you can run trucks 24/7 without stopping then you can cut their speed say 33% or whatever and still come out on top. You can also adjust the cargo to reduce stopping distance - use autonomous truckers for t…

> …you can cut their speed say 33%… You probably can’t have cars going 70 or faster sharing the road with trucks going a steady 45.

In Germany you share the Autobahn with trucks going 90km/h and some cars going 200 km/h.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#139

Post by skybrian »

fleischhauf wrote: post #121
BobaFloutist wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> two trucks in tandem, and later perhaps more. Or we could put them on tracks and physically attach them to one another.

you mean like a .. train

No. Trains are great for what they do, but roads go more places.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#140

Post by jmspring »

linkjuice4all wrote: post #7
jmspring wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article calls out the challenge of stopping distance and sensing range. Drive Hwy80 over the Sierra Nevada mountains in winter, stopping, predictability, many other factors come up as well.

I know that “just put it on a freight train” doesn’t solve every logistics problem but it does kind of address this one. Maybe their solution should be focused on improving transloading between truck and train and using autonomous trucking to solve the “last mile(s)” problem for trains.

Oh I think the major rail lines should be used for long haul cargo traffic Salt Lake -> Reno -> Sacramento -> Bay Area would be one example an keep it off mountain roads.
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