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Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

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Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#151

Post by davchana »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #108
hinkley wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 But I think the bar for civilian is also woefully out of date now.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…

This is a great idea and the first I've heard of it. Set a maximum weight of 5,000 lbs for an ordinary license. Minivans will come in just under the line. Small SUVs like the CRV or RAV4 will be allowed, as will small trucks like the Ford Maverick. Indeed, most of those vehicles are under 4,000 lbs. Even some larger SUVs like the Honda Pilot or (just barely) the Toyota 4runner get under the bar. Even a low-specced F-…

It would also help to make it expensive to maintain/own vehicles over certain wait. California charges weight fees, but only for pickups, no car or SUV gets that weight fees.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#152

Post by ars »

itsoktocry wrote: post #105
coryrc wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding more wheels does not reduce stopping distance.

Doesn't it though? More rolling resistance and braking surface area?

But then pressure (force) on each tire is lower now, so the friction is also lower.

Effective friction is a function of weight and coefficient of friction between the materials. Interestingly the surface area of the contact is not part of the equation.

On a flat surface a truck and a car using the same tire compound should have identical stopping distances. The issue comes when you are going downhill.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#153

Post by gear54rus »

ahigherugliness wrote: post #143

I wonder why we don't lower the ambitions: chain five trucks together, so that for long stretches of highway (hundreds of miles) one driver can drive the "train of trucks" while the other truck drivers sleep. The trucks could be really close together so no cars can come between them. What problems am I overlooking that are not easily solvable?

Inability to change lanes without killing a few of those small vehicle operators :)

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#154

Post by jillesvangurp »

The article assumes that the reason autonomous trucks haven't happened yet is that it's harder. I think the real reason is probably simply that #1 it's less glamorous for investors and #2 most of the companies producing trucks are probably not great at doing anything with software. So, the investment levels and effort that has gone into autonomous trucks so far just isn't at the same level and the companies that have gotten the furthest with autonomous driving just haven't focused much on trucks so far. Not because it's harder but because cars are hard enough, more lucrative, and they want to focus on those first. That could change. Once they nail cars, trucks are an obvious next target.

There are a few other possible reasons; such as electrical trucks still lagging a bit behind electrical cars in terms of volume production and a few other things. Electrical trucks are a lot easier to drive for humans because they don't have a lot of complicated gears, hydraulics, and other things to worry about. That makes them easier to control autonomously as well.

Other than being bigger, the job of autonomously controlling a big truck isn't that different from that of controlling a car. If you can do one, you should be able to do the other. Ballpark it's the same kind of problem. Same roads, obstacles, problems, traffic situations, challenges, etc. Same everything, basically. I don't think the speed or the size of the vehicles is that much of a factor for how hard this is to do.

As for safety, the barrier is actually pretty low. There os a high number of accidents that involve truck drivers asleep or unfocused behind the wheel because they've been driving for way too long. Or getting distracted by their phones. Happens more in the US than in Europe because some differences in rules related to mandatory breaks. But it happens on both sides and it's a bit of a challenge.

We're measuring with very different standards for humans and autonomous vehicles. With autonomous driving it's all about hypothetical things that may or may not go wrong and therefore we should wait until it's so perfect that it can never happen, 100% guaranteed. With human drivers, it's just an endless stream of never ending accidents, fatalities, and misery where we just go "ah well, that's just life". Never mind all the obvious issues with aging truck drivers that are severely out of shape due to life style issues associated with trucking after they've been on the road for ten hours. This attitude is more than a little bit irrational.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#155

Post by akira2501 »

ahigherugliness wrote: post #143

I wonder why we don't lower the ambitions: chain five trucks together, so that for long stretches of highway (hundreds of miles) one driver can drive the "train of trucks" while the other truck drivers sleep. The trucks could be really close together so no cars can come between them. What problems am I overlooking that are not easily solvable?

There aren't any logistic piplines that make this favorable. If you actually wanted to do this you'd load it on intermodal freight cars and push it down rail to the destination.

People seem to think trucks go from one "transfer hub" to another. That hardly ever happens, and when it does, the trucker usually drops off one trailer and picks up a different one.

Most truck routes are actual deliveries or pickups. You go from the distribution center for a supplier and then you do a chain of stops at 4 or 5 stores where parts of the load are taken off the truck and the rest goes to the next stop. Or you pick up an empty and go to 2 or 3 locations to pick up finished product to either be delivered or brought to distribution.

I mean.. there's _thousands_ of hours of truckers on Youtube just doing their job and discussing it. You could watch any of those channels for a few hours and be _lightyears_ ahead of the typical "AV programmers" thinking on the subject.

It's kind of depressing really, how so many silicon valley type people never take the time to learn how the industry works.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#156

Post by bee_rider »

bwestergard wrote: post #146
chmod600 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Can you provide a few examples of people expressing a general desire for "more stuff faster" before 1500 and outside Western Europe?

I mean the copper ingot guy was sort of complaining that he hadn’t gotten enough (good) copper ingots and that his couriers had had to make multiple trips and had come back empty handed each time. This isn’t exactly “more stuff faster,” but it is pretty close.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#157

Post by pinkmuffinere »

karaterobot wrote: post #132

> 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…

Ya, I wonder the same thing. In an extreme case it seems like you could build dedicated repeaters/cell phone towers/something along specific stretches of highway, and then start testing along just that stretch with remote operators on call. I suspect remote operators are cheaper than devoted drivers, potentially making a profit from that transition alone, and also collect training data to develop full autonomy.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#158

Post by perlgeek »

chefkoch wrote: post #138
jmull wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …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.

... and I hate it, it's so much stress (unless you're constantly on the right lane and driving 90km/h).

When you cross from the Autobahn to Denmark, where there's a speed limit of at most 130km/h, traffic immediately becomes less stressful.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#159

Post by cariaso »

bwestergard wrote: post #146
chmod600 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Can you provide a few examples of people expressing a general desire for "more stuff faster" before 1500 and outside Western Europe?

sure here’s one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(ship)

As part of the

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#160

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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 ?

I don’t drive at all when it snows as a human. Our whole city basically shuts down then, and we are pretty far north as far as cities go.

Even in places that expect snow, cars are moving much more slowly and cautiously than normal. It almost seems like self driving cars would do much better in those situations given the speeds and caution involved.

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