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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

#311

Post by lettergram »

> This is a really, really high bar. For example, on surface streets, this means the system on its own is capable of driving at least 100k miles without property damage and 40M miles without fatality. The system can still have flaws, but virtually all of those problems must result in a lack of progress, rather than collision or injury

This is a weird way to think of it, I don't actually think of it as statistics. The failure cases will be different (between human and AI). Further, we want to be able to sue those responsible (not some nameless company).

Final thought, I wonder if this is the metric, when we'll start seeing insurance remove humans or increase the premiums. Basically, exponentially driving everyone into AI driving

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#312

Post by eru »

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…

Freight railroads are alive and well in the US. Incidentally, it's also the side of the railroad business that is mostly deregulated and privatised. The passenger business is nationalised, and frankly a basket case.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#313

Post by eru »

obmelvin wrote: post #268
ederamen wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 40% of "ton-miles" - trains disproportionately move heavy, cheap goods (i.e. aggregate, coal), which makes that number potentially misleading. The percentage of freight moved by rail by "value" is closer to 15% (trucking is ~65%). https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2017-north-american-freight-num... https://www.aar.org/facts-figures#:~:text=Freight%20rail%20a... .

I agree it's good to consider the whole picture, but ton-miles are probably the most important to consider given the increased diesel required to truck heavy loads, correct?

Plus congestion and labour etc.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#314

Post by justinjlynn »

eru wrote: post #312
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…

Freight railroads are alive and well in the US. Incidentally, it's also the side of the railroad business that is mostly deregulated and privatised. The passenger business is nationalised, and frankly a basket case.

(it's not a basket case because it's nationalised, it's nationalised because it's a basket case - thank the automotive industry - and it's a national security asset)

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#315

Post by eru »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #306
ehnto wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So perhaps a priority could be to build more medium/high speed passenger rail, and get it off the freight lines? Travelers and commuters win, cargo wins! It is funny though, the US built it's current freight network in a comparatively low tech era, yet I doubt it could do it again in the current era due to funding and beauracracy.

This is a weird post. Could any highly industrialised nation build a new freight network today? Probably not. Mostly, it would be blocked by noise complaints and lack of land. Most nation-sized freight rail networks were built more than 100 years ago when population density was far lower and noise controls barely existed. Also, have you heard of the Alameda Corridor is Los Angeles County? That project is incredible.…

Freight trains don't have to be louder than passenger trains. (Though from what I've heard, the US has incredible noisy trains, thanks also to lots of horn blaring?)

And quite a few industrialised countries around the world are building more rail lines.

The US already has an extensive freight rail network. It's the one part of their rail transport that works fairly well. Expanding that should be possible.

Especially because freight typically travels slower than passengers, so your track doesn't need to be as straight, so you have more leeway in planning.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#316

Post by eru »

cityofdelusion wrote: post #292
gepardi wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. No one (generally) bats an eye when voting at the city level for a $100mm road package. But trains? Freight should move mostly by train. We could build rail lines where there are already highways, just swap a vehicle lain for a train rail, all that 18 wheeler traffic can be reduced significantly. Safer highways. Less congestion.

Not that simple, at least in the U.S. Rail has far stricter requirements on turn radius and grade. As an example the highways around here have 6%+ grade segments (after tunneling!) and rail is rarely over 1%. I haven’t even mentioned the incorrect subgrade and the massive safety envelope (approx 20x20 feet) which is about 2 highway lanes wide and far too tall for the thousands of highway overpasses. Rail truly is a u…

The requirements for rail depend also on how fast you want to run your trains.

Passenger trains typically (want to) run faster than freight, so the requirements are stricter.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#317

Post by eru »

factormeta wrote: post #297
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…

>As a culture, we've been brainwashed not to fund trains. The billionaires are surely investing heavily on trains and farms.

Some of them are.

Which goes to show that money doesn't have that much of an influence in politics, despite popular opinion to the contrary.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#318

Post by eru »

kevinchen wrote: post #271
aga98mtl wrote: post #221

The issue with braking distance and jackknifing could be resolved with smaller trucks. The 18 wheeler we know is optimal because it maximize the cubic volume driven by one person. If you don't need the human driver, two smaller trucks might be better than one.

The cab, sensors, and compute are also expensive, not to mention other variable costs like staff for remote assistance, maintenance, and first/last mile

Sensors and compute will get rapidly cheaper over time, because they are on the cost curve of electronics. (And they are getting cheaper even if autonomous trucking has only small production numbers, just like batteries will continue to get better, even if nobody builds electric cars: the whole electronics industry is working on those technologies regardless.)

The cab can be a lot cheaper, if you don't have to keep a human comfortable and safe inside. Also keep in mind that an autonomous truck can drive 24 hours a day, and doesn't need to take regular breaks throughout the day nor sleep. (They will need maintenance, but probably not more than a manned truck.)

You are right that the costs are real. Things like first/last mile (or loading and unloading) would probably need a major reshake of the industry, if the truck doesn't bring its own labour, in the form of a driver, with it.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#319

Post by eru »

gcanyon wrote: post #302
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A human decision to stop is not binary 1/0. If I am approaching a hazard, first thing to do is raise alertness. Also, lift foot off accelerator pedal. Then, put foot on brake. Then, apply some pressure to brake. All this stuff happens on a gradient depending how quickly I need to react and stop. So between which endpoints shall you measure "reaction time"? I'm already priming my reaction by actions which lead up to i…

I had a guy do the exact opposite: he slammed on the brakes doing a left turn in front of me. I t-boned him. If he had had a passenger they would have been severely injured: he was driving a Kia, I was driving an Isuzu Trooper. My entire family was in the Trooper, and we were fine. The Trooper's radiator (and air conditioning) were broken, but we put in a new radiator and drove it another 150 thousand miles. That Tro…

That's a good argument for taxing cars (partially) by weight.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#320

Post by eru »

kevinchen wrote: post #293
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…

Author here. At the mean time between failures needed to exceed human performance, the uptime of the network connection quickly becomes a limiting factor. It’s possible to pick only routes that have great cell coverage but this limits commercial viability.

Satellite internet is fast becoming good enough and cheap enough.

As an additional safeguard, you can make your trucks go into 'safety' mode when connection becomes spotty or when too many operators become too busy with other trucks.

'Safety mode' could mean slowing down the trucks or even stopping some of them. And in general, letting the autonomous systems err on the side of caution more often.

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