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Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

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Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#251

Post by ZeroSolstice »

lvl102 wrote: post #244
ZeroSolstice wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct this is the best path forward. Night time is typically when there is less traffic and we should be able to at least utilize that for autonomous transportation between distribution centers. Then slowing keep upping the advancement as roads are repaired, replaced, etc. If you build a smart road for lets say just trucking, now you can map out the best places for distribution centers, similar to what UPS, Fedex f…

One could argue traffic light was the first “smart” feature added to roads. Why do we continue to have costly high way accidents in 2024? Massive pile ups can be minimized and even avoided.

Unfortunately we didn't expand upon thinking about multiple intersections and their traffic lights being a network. We have fixed programming of lighting schedules that don't change unless a traffic survey is done. In most cases these are limited in their occurrences which doesn't reflect the dynamics of driving.

As an example I'm sure most people don't mind moving as long as they feel like they are getting somewhere. With the dynamics of traffic you could re-direct people to a different on/off ramp even though its further away to keep the same rate of speed for everyone. Maybe you send people down a different or parallel road for longer because it will get them there at the same time verses stop-and-go traffic because everyone wants to use the same or well-known road.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#252

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

nimbius wrote: post #242
awinter-py wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you explain the issue with logging + tandem adjustment?

Even if autonomous trucks managed to handle digital logging they'll still get stopped for inspection due to weather, traffic, and load size. The rear tandem adjustment takes place on the trailer and is mandatory for safe operation so, youre building autonomous trailers too (no one is).

How difficult would it be to build a semi-autonomous system where e.g. the forklift operator (or whoever else is involved in unloading/loading/connecting the trailer) performs the manual actions on the trailer while the robo-tractor does the parts that require driving?

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#253

Post by yodon »

daveguy wrote: post #56
silvestrov wrote: post #10

If he thinks driving cars in cities is the easiest problem, he does not have experience driving a car in a European city with lots of cyclists and pedestrians. Driving a car in inner Copenhagen is a stressful situation due to the insane number of cyclist you have to watch out for, see https://youtu.be/FaySp9i2zMA?t=113

City driving is obviously more difficult than highway driving. I don't know how in the world he came to the conclusion highway driving is more difficult. Especially if you consider the truck form factor in a city.

I'm pretty sure "More difficult" here is a comparison of vectors in a non-Euclidean space of high dimensionality. Depending on how you measure across those dimensions you can come up with wildly different answers. The author has explained some of how they assess the dimensions.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#254

Post by zik »

lotsoweiners wrote: post #176
silvestrov wrote: post #10

If he thinks driving cars in cities is the easiest problem, he does not have experience driving a car in a European city with lots of cyclists and pedestrians. Driving a car in inner Copenhagen is a stressful situation due to the insane number of cyclist you have to watch out for, see https://youtu.be/FaySp9i2zMA?t=113

Seems like it should be more stressful for the cyclists especially if they aren’t following the rules of the road.

The "rules of the road" in the US are completely slanted towards cars and against all other road users. That makes complying with them inconvenient and dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists to the advantage of cars.

For example very few countries have "right turn on red" laws like the US has. That law alone is responsible for hundreds of pedestrian deaths. Jaywalking laws were introduced to benefit cars irrespective the fact that they make life insufferable for pedestrians when legal crossings are so few and far between in the US.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#255

Post by yodon »

nativeit wrote: post #55
lvl102 wrote: post #41

We need smart roads. Not just smart cars. Until that happens, autonomous is impractical. You don’t want to build an autonomous system to match human error rate. That basically got us nowhere in the past seven years since Elon bs’d his way to selling vaporware.

Aaaaand we’re back to reinventing trains. There should be a name for this phenomenon. How long do tech folks discuss how to improve transportation until they attempt to reinvent trains?

>Aaaaand we’re back to reinventing trains. There should be a name for this phenomenon

https://xkcd.com/2314/

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#256

Post by mcmoor »

beedeebeedee wrote: post #247

Build more railroads. (I used to work for an autonomous truck company, and when you factor in the cost of roads in addition to the development of the trucks, it makes absolutely no sense to do autonomous trucking when you could do trains. As a culture, we've been brainwashed not to fund trains. We collectively spend billions and billions on roads but would not dare spend money to build more tracks. It is shocking and…

I thought that trains is already hyper focused on cargo that's why the passenger experience is so terrible

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#257

Post by ZeroSolstice »

ramboldio wrote: post #116

I'm wondering why there is so little talk about changing road infrastructure to make self-driving easier to pull off. E.g. dedicated lanes for self driving or hand-off stations where human drivers can take over etc etc. Amid the massive potential upsides, any reasonable government would invest in measures that turn out to effectivley improve self-drivability of the respective national grid.

This is my thinking as well. We need to build for the task at hand not try and integrate into what we already have. The first sentence in this article is where the failed assumptions are.

  "Trucking was supposed to be the ideal first application of autonomous driving. Freeways contain predictable, highly structured 
  driving scenarios.."
When sharing the road with human drivers this statement makes no sense as all. Vehicle's are their own entities with no connection to each other outside of the road, signage and defined lanes. Instead of trying to build sensors for a existing 8-lane highway just do it for (2) isolated lanes. You don't have to plan for 100% of human scenarios if they are mostly removed. We don't fly airplanes adjacent, behind, ahead, etc of each other why is the assumption that autonomous trucks need to be on the same road as everyone else.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#258

Post by capitainenemo »

beedeebeedee wrote: post #247

Build more railroads. (I used to work for an autonomous truck company, and when you factor in the cost of roads in addition to the development of the trucks, it makes absolutely no sense to do autonomous trucking when you could do trains. As a culture, we've been brainwashed not to fund trains. We collectively spend billions and billions on roads but would not dare spend money to build more tracks. It is shocking and…

Hm. I did a quick search on freight percentages, EU vs US and google gave me this snippet off the top hit. "46 percent of European freight goes by truck while only 11 percent goes by rail, while in the United States more than 40 percent goes by rail while just 30 percent goes on the highway."

Seems US is doing pretty well on prioritising freight rail transport, despite brainwashing, at least compared to europe.

Which is probably a good thing. Until that figure is a lot higher, passenger rail is just one more thing reducing the efficiencies of freight.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#259

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #238

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihkVBBThAnE This is a video from our firefighters here in slovenia... Humans are shitty drivers, sure, but how the hell would a computer react to a chaos like this?

Pulling to the side when the traffic jam starts, not only when the firefighter walks up and knocks on the window.

Also, since it's a relatively time-insensitive situation (as in, tens of seconds to deal with it rather than seconds), once it identifies that it's an exceptional situation, it can have someone connect to the truck remotely.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#260

Post by AlexandrB »

beedeebeedee wrote: post #247

Build more railroads. (I used to work for an autonomous truck company, and when you factor in the cost of roads in addition to the development of the trucks, it makes absolutely no sense to do autonomous trucking when you could do trains. As a culture, we've been brainwashed not to fund trains. We collectively spend billions and billions on roads but would not dare spend money to build more tracks. It is shocking and…

I think the problem few people talk about is the small, in-city rail lines that used to exist that don't anymore. 100 years ago the city I live in had dedicated rail lines going to every major factory in the city - there was little need for last-mile trucking. AFAIK there are no western cities that are organized like this anymore, so the best you can do is deliver goods to a rail station and truck it from there - this requires a bunch of temporary storage space to transfer cargo and delays everything.

Here's another example - look at all the little rail branch lines servicing parts of 1944 Boston: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/img4/ht_icons/overlay/MA/MA_Boston%20...

I don't know how you bring that back after decades of building for cars.

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