21–30 of 196 posts
There's a project in Switzerland to build an underground network of cargo tubes.[1] Cargo Sous Terrain has been making animated videos since 2016, though, and as yet has very little hardware to show. Their proposed tunnels are 6 meters in diameter and have 3 lanes, traversed by AGVs. [1] https://www.cst.ch/en
I wonder what's their plan when a vehicle gets stuck?
This.. has to be a joke? Surely they don't believe a "battery-powered autonomous vehicle" is more reliable than a pneumatic tube network?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume they are planning to have some kind of rescue vehicle. But the problem with this will be the traffic jam the stuck vehicle will cause. Not only will all the vehicles behind it need to stop as well, they also need to be rerouted in order to let the rescue vehicle pass. The main difference of pumping water or gas through pipes is that the consumer does not care which part of the pumped product he gets. It's al…
Simply back the other vehicles out, it's not rocket science
I was curious how the package is loaded and unloaded, given that it's underground, but they seem to have some kind of crane, and at the destinations they have basically a package locker. At least, that's what the video seems to show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STZJyfAl5bU Putting a package locker at every location seems kind of expensive. Maybe it works if you're delivering to bigger buildings like offices or ap…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working They're likely only running a single tunnel during very early testing in order to keep costs down. Their idea is basically a cargo-carrying, miniature version of a rubber-tyre metro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro ..which is a century old concept. Thus well-understood, as evidenced by the wikipedia article listing their benefits and downsides versus…
Yeah but if a Paris Metro train gets stuck, the tunnels are enormous and your maintenance staff can walk from the nearest station to repair and un-stuck the train. It's not clear to me that these tunnels will be sufficiently large.
Or you send a human down the line on a platform with wheels. The tunnel would have to be at least as high as those crates and at least twice as wide.
There are far bigger challenges here, like the absolutely massive cost of digging / boring the tunnel and trying to amortize that over what you're delivering. You have to move a fuckton of Big Macs to have this make financial sense, and your competitors include "a guy on an electric bike making tips who uses a few KWhr of electricity over an 8-10 hour shift."
It's really hard to compete against massively subsidized public infrastructure (roads and ICE vehicles) when you're not subsidized at all.
[flagged]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume they are planning to have some kind of rescue vehicle. But the problem with this will be the traffic jam the stuck vehicle will cause. Not only will all the vehicles behind it need to stop as well, they also need to be rerouted in order to let the rescue vehicle pass. The main difference of pumping water or gas through pipes is that the consumer does not care which part of the pumped product he gets. It's al…
Simply back the other vehicles out, it's not rocket science
[flagged]