261–270 of 363 posts
In America, we are willing to do anything to avoid expanding or upgrading our rail infrastructure.
This is a good thing IMO, it’s too late to play catch up with rail infrastructure, we should just skip to the next big thing and let the rest of the world have their antiquated rail structures.
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next level would be to hook these "platoons" together physically and then centralize the propulsion in a super efficient package. And then we could move them off the highways and onto specialized "tracks" that guarantee they don't deviate from the planned routes. speculative, alien technology, admittedly, but some day our scientists will figure it out i bet!
Problem is those railroad cars usually don't share origin and destination. And spending a day or two on the switchyard for every couple of hours of actual travel isn't what customers want. The beaty of platooning is that trucks can join and leave while traveling at speed, all they need is a free lane on the side. And if you really want to tease out all the efficiencies of rail, without suffering the drawbacks, you ma…
None of those numbers are impressive. Longhaul only from Dallas to Houston. What's missing in the article is the huge number of issues that the system most certainly has. We've been promised driverless technology for over 10 years now. If you can't do it with cars, then why does anyone think we would have it with delivery trucks? Please use critical thinking for one second. I beg you HN. This is just another tech com…
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> Why do you think a trucker would risk life or even their truck in a highway robbery? That's an armed robbery whereas stealing from a robo-truck is more like breaking and entering. Robberies require the willingness and ability to commit violence. Having a human witness present means more risk of things going wrong, even if they don't intervene. I think all these factors prevent a lot of potential crimes.
These trucks are already covered in cameras. The self driving ones even more. How does this highway robbery even work? You force the autonomous truck to stop, take an angle grinder to the doors, then... unpack all the crates and boxes and hope you find something good that's also small enough to get away with? it just doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
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next level would be to hook these "platoons" together physically and then centralize the propulsion in a super efficient package. And then we could move them off the highways and onto specialized "tracks" that guarantee they don't deviate from the planned routes. speculative, alien technology, admittedly, but some day our scientists will figure it out i bet!
Wouldn’t it be great to enable electric cars to go long distances with platoons? Like a bus system for electric cars to go between cities and charge while you drive. The ‘bus’ is basically a big efficient generator that can charge up the cars behind it. A lot like mid flight refueling for fighter jets.
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Hmm. That sounds like it might lead to a monopolization of these tracks, as networks consolidate, and then ultimately evolve into a stagnant industry more focused on cutting costs than innovating...
I suspect that's why a competent government might invest more in these tracks as they might contribute a lot to delivery infrastructure. Especially in a consumer-based economy where shipping goods is important.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transportation_in_the_Uni...
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Let me know where you can find a competent government not currently trying to burn down its own consumer-based economy with tariffs and xenophobia and which doesn't consider trains a communist plot. And whether they take American passports.
Switzerland?
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> So why aren't trains automated yet? Why? The labor of a conductor is a fraction of the total cost to move the cargo, to the point it’s a rounding error.
And it means someone on site to react sensibly when things go wrong. Think of the Miracle on the Hudson. The pilot said "This is the captain. Brace for impact." The flight attendants picked up on that and immediately began directing the passengers on what "brace for impact" means. Without that how many would have reacted properly (the info is on the safety card, but how many have read it well enough??), how many woul…
Anyway, labor costs to have a couple engineers aboard is much less than if the load was travelling by truck, even if the trucks have no driver in them, they're likely supervised at a ratio with more humans than it takes to operate a long freight train.
In America, we are willing to do anything to avoid expanding or upgrading our rail infrastructure.
I expected to find some of the tech that snow plows use on Donner Pass for lane keeping, RRDPS, but couldn't find any info indicating that they are using highway embedded sensors to aid the autonomous trucks. https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/research-innov... > The RRPDS must maintain an estimate of the vehicle state (i.e., position, velocity, heading, and heading rate) relative to the roadway with posit…
The farmers I know tell me that their tractors and combines use autonomous guidance, including turning at the end of each row.
the important part to note as those systems don't have detection of anyone/thing that might be there. In a rural field no problem as nobody is there but on a city road there will be plenty of things to watch out for. We are working on the safety parts, I'm not in that area so I'm not sure what the current state is.