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Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

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Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#381

Post by Eisenstein »

eru wrote: post #315
throwaway2037 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Can you expound on this?

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#382

Post by Eisenstein »

eru wrote: post #365
justinjlynn wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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)

Freight railroads weren't always doing so well. They picked up a lot after deregulation. Compare also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of... and see eg the share of rail in all transport.

You mean when they ditched their much-less-profitable passenger lines and forced the government to deal with them, then heavily consolidated?

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#383

Post by akira2501 »

ahigherugliness wrote: post #197
akira2501 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry to depress you. You're right, I don't know anything of the business.

Here's a place where automation and even EV would be _highly_ useful: "yard dogs."

Like I said, there's lots of "drop and hooks" in the industry, where your job is to leave a trailer behind somewhere and pick a new one up at that same place. That hub then needs a truck to go move the trailer from the spot, to the warehouse, then back again.

Trailers are numbered in a serialized fashion. Parking lots could be mapped with insane precision. Loading docks would need minimal upgrades. You could have a mostly automated warehouse freight yard logistics system. You generally have lots of power and only so many moves in a day so EV would be a big winner in any non-wintering lot, for a good reduction in diesel usage.

Okay.. now you can start thinking about tight integration between the trucks electronic communication system sending gps position updates to the warehouse enabling just in time trailer movements on the lot so a trucker might be able to breeze into and out of the lot in 5 minutes with everything waiting and queued up at the front gate for him. Now he doesn't need to navigate a strange lot at 5mph trying to find the right place to drop and the right trailer to grab, a good source of errors.

Now you can get into moving the EV automated yard dog off the lot and into the hands of larger customers like big box construction stores. A truck could be dropped off at a convenient place in the lot and a small mover could go grab it and maneuver it into the local dock. You could tighten up the spacing on those docks and put them in places a full tractor couldn't possibly pull them into. This also prevents the safety issue where the trucker can move the trailer before the business has finished with it, a good source of injuries.

Anyways.. silicon valley is focused completely on the wrong side and scale of the problems. There's so many "little things" where EV and automation could do wonders. Instead, everybody with a touching back story and a high valuation imagines themselves being able to become the next monopolistic transport baron at the cost of everyone else.

You didn't ask.. but..

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#384

Post by ars »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #358
ars wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> On a flat surface a truck and a car using the same tire compound should have identical stopping distances. Well according to the article they don't have identical stopping distances, so let's figure out what would fix it. > The issue comes when you are going downhill. That just changes the angle of gravity. Why would it affect trucks and cars differently? I thought the point was that going downhill exacerbates diff…

> so let's figure out what would fix it.

For one thing an 18 wheeler has 10 brakes, not 18. So that's an obvious thing to fix.

> Why would it affect trucks and cars differently?

The weight of the truck acts as an acceleration force when going downhill. The tire friction of a car and truck is the same - but then the truck has extra force trying to accelerate the vehicle when it's downhill.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#385

Post by zuppy »

rascul wrote: post #341
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA most railroad are owned by the railroad company. When Amtrak wants to use a piece of rail they pay the railway. But the USA is VAST. Freight trains are LONG. Not much of America's West is actually double track. And when you have a shorter Amtrack and a long freight train the Amtrack loses. The Amtrack has to wait until the freight train has passed. As the freight trains run on PSR [1] there is no fixed tim…

Amtrak blames freight trains for not following the law and the DoJ for not enforcing the law. Which is just one side of the story. https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

wendover did a good viedeo about that a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQTjLWIHN74

the law says that passenger trains have priority, but nobody respects or enforces that.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#386

Post by manquer »

anticensor wrote: post #359
manquer wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote does not mean just sitting in a room far away. It could be simply one truck with a lead driver and few automated ones following it closely. Road trains are an option. Even just two autonomous trailers to a lead truck will reduce the driver costs by 2/3rds. Unlike autonomous cars where everyone needs to go wherever, inter city trucks have fixed well known routes with predicable volume of cargo that can be easil…

> one truck with a lead driver and few automated ones following it closely. Bulk freight trains solve that problem already. Simply use flatcars or intermodal containers then use rubber tyred trucks in the last kilometre.

Nobody is arguing that rail would be better if they exist ,however coverage is not good enough now and that doesn’t look it will change anytime soon.

Given the realities we have , road trains is probably what we can realistically achieve I think .

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#387

Post by ChatGTP »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #378
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…

Been trying to do that in CA for the last 30 years with nothing to show for it. It seems like it's faster to invent AGI and let it drive the trucks.

Maybe the AGI will help the Californians workout how to build trains?

...or just kill everyone, problem solved :)

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#388

Post by ajsnigrutin »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #259
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.

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

And get overtaken by other drivers :) Then a lot of honking and swerving would be needed to get back in the correct lane. Also they sometimes need to back up a bit, to let a 'late' driver to move infront of them, or behind them, move to the other side, interpret what honking means to whom, etc... or drive forwards a bit, or whatever the firefighter knocking on the window tells them, speech recognition is still not perfect and interpreting abstract orders is even worse.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#389

Post by t917910 »

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…

Having a railroad without a highway (and a highway won't come along and serve itself) will mean that you won't get to any city on your own. Wait for the train, maybe the railroad authorities will deign to launch a passenger train once a week, of such quality that you won't want to ride it. Like in some places in the Russian Federation. Or buy an off-road vehicle and go camping instead of traveling.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#390

Post by AniseAbyss »

capitainenemo wrote: post #258
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…

Europe has rivers and canals.
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