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Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

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Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#391

Post by AtlasBarfed »

nimbius wrote: post #236
awinter-py wrote: post #231

wonder how much of this could be solved with a $10000 sensor post every 200m of road? 48k miles in the interstate = 80k km, 400k posts, 4 billion dollars (and you can start regionally) could also run semi-autonomous convoys where a robot truck follows a human truck, extending sensor range

I'm a diesel engine mechanic by trade, and having been to a few mid america trucking shows I can definitively say the autonomous trucking scenes pretty dead in the water. Too many "ideal condition" technologies, not enough edge condition focus (lots with no turnaround, lots with poor traction or mud,etc...) And too many companies demanding infrastructure investment that won't come. The in cab electronic log system is…

sensors would be passive, thus no maintenance. 10,000$ every 200m is stupid. You use RFID chips or similar things.

I don't know how often signs are replaced, but at some point every sign should come with an RFID chip that encodes information about it, although you can probably just glue a chip onto a sign as well.

We scoff at Tesla's self driving claims and the valley between their "FSD" and actual required products, but they'll keep hammering at it. There's probably a trillion dollars of valuation for solving it. Musk's current managerial incompetence aside, Tesla DOES have the data collection platform to get all the data needed for self-driving, especially the "easier" stuff.

Once enough cargo is moving along a route, if there's sections of that route that are not ideal for automated movement, that will be brought to attention of the transportation agency.

The value proposition is obvious: generally, interstate highways are almost totally unutilized from about 10pm to 5am (outside of cities). 6-7 hours of transit that could be used (and offload the transit from rush hour times when passenger cars demand it more).

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#392

Post by ericmay »

chockablock wrote: post #295
ericmay wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoning is a problem, but it's not the only problem there. I think there are at least two more good ones we could discuss: 1. We actually do not have a market mechanic that exists in the United States that allows people to choose properly dense homes or neighborhoods because of a number of reasons. Search tools and things like that focus on metrics like square footage or number of bathrooms, and so people select for t…

Sorry 1 does not make sense. It's not like I bid on a house based on its square footage, and then only find out the address when I win. Even in the US, walkability scores, satellite photos, maps of transit and bike lanes, commute estimates, are all common enough on real estate sites. I think you just be seeing may be observing people's expressed preferences.

When you go online to use a search tool like Zillow, the main categories and features used to search are price, square footage, number of bedrooms, and number of bathrooms.

There are no filters or options for things like proximity to a park or coffee shop, neighborhood demographics, whether the neighborhood has events or a civic organization, or other relevant information. There is no scorecard for whether or not a home is architecturally sound (I.e. symmetrical, built with proper materials for the environment, etc.) either. You actually have to look through dozens or hundreds of homes yourself.

Items like walkability scores which are displayed on websites like Zillow are good, but they don’t really tell you much about how actually walkable an area is. They’re also not a primary feature in the search utilities.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#393

Post by mchusma »

I don’t t suspect it’s a technical issue at all, it’s economic.

Trucking and truck routes do have a strong incentive to switch eventually. But the examples given of Cruise and Waymo are losing tons of money.

Trucking companies would need to rework their business model around these hubs. So they won’t invest in this yet, not until it’s closer.

And for parties trying to make self driving work, it makes sense to try it on smaller, less expensive vehicles first. It’s the number of miles driven that drives learning rates, and if your cost per mile driven is lower, you get more learning per dollar.

And achieving true autonomy also needs a variety of scenarios, not just freeway. So being freeway only isn’t quite the advantage you would want. A million miles of city and highway driving helps you learn more than a million miles of highway driving. I think regulators know this intuitively too, and are more prone to approve.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#394

Post by Workaccount2 »

sendomatic wrote: post #355
ChainOfFools wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a city that has some of these going through it, and I can say that my opinions changed dramatically after moving here, with respect to this idea. Our real estate agent, in hindsight, had employed numerous subtle tactics to discourage us from taking serious interest in homes that were within a quarter mile or so of these lines, although I was completely oblivious to what they were doing at the time. What I d…

I live in a small town and the loudest sounds besides the train itself is the extremely loud horn it blows before every crossing. Apparently nobody wants to pay for automatic booms at the road crossings so it legally has to use the horn that blasts through the area.

We have booms and the horns still legally have to blast the entire neighborhood at 12am...or 4am.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#395

Post by Workaccount2 »

jackvalentine wrote: post #275
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.

If we’re going to be investing public money and ripping up/modifying the current infrastructure I’d actually prefer we just focus on the usual goals of urbanism and deprecate the car from the picture.

Only a small fraction of people will give up their cars, but I do hope the no-car evangelism takes off. Y'all can ride the trolley with stops every quarter mile while I just cruise on the now empty roads in my own personal car, parking right next to my jobs front door. Thanks.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#396

Post by nradov »

lmpdev wrote: post #331
ChainOfFools wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a city that has some of these going through it, and I can say that my opinions changed dramatically after moving here, with respect to this idea. Our real estate agent, in hindsight, had employed numerous subtle tactics to discourage us from taking serious interest in homes that were within a quarter mile or so of these lines, although I was completely oblivious to what they were doing at the time. What I d…

Not all locomotives are equal, electric is much quieter than diesel Both older DC and newer AC trains are effectively silent when coasting on a straight The main sources of noise are cornering and braking. I live in a rare city that has narrow gauge for all of our rail, and am less than 200m from the busiest corridor in our state I regret chosing an apartment on a tight bend (narrow gauge's bends are especially loud)…

On some urban rail lines, the main source of noise is the horn which they blow at every intersection.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#397

Post by seanmcdirmid »

eru wrote: post #369
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tightening liability for drivers, instead of letting them get away with a slap on the wrist when they kill a pedestrian or cyclists etc would probably suffice. That really can only happen if the roads are improved enough that drivers can’t cast reasonable doubt around when an accident occurs. Like a road used as a main car route, but has lots of on street parking to obscure pedestrians and bicycles, and also has a…

What do you mean by reasonable doubt? If you are in a car and you hit someone, it should be your fault. If the road is bad, you should drive slow enough that it's not dangerous. If you can't see anything, because there are cars parked, perhaps you shouldn't drive, or only drive very slowly. It should be your responsibility as a driver to only drive when the view ain't obscured. When I'm eg running around with a knife…

Again, the fact that the roads are designed so poorly for this still gives drivers too much sympathy from authorities, regulators, and the general public. It literally can happen to anyone who decides to drive at all, given that visibility is so messed up.

The ditch will heavily sanction a driver and go through a likely redesign when an accident happens. You can’t just expect drivers to do the right thing, you have to also make right things possible. The American approach of “let’s require drivers to develop precognition” is just ridiculously stupid.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#398

Post by laszlojamf »

nradov wrote: post #396
lmpdev wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all locomotives are equal, electric is much quieter than diesel Both older DC and newer AC trains are effectively silent when coasting on a straight The main sources of noise are cornering and braking. I live in a rare city that has narrow gauge for all of our rail, and am less than 200m from the busiest corridor in our state I regret chosing an apartment on a tight bend (narrow gauge's bends are especially loud)…

On some urban rail lines, the main source of noise is the horn which they blow at every intersection.

Also, as a friend noticed when he bought a ver nice apartment next to the railroad is that they have to (at least in Sweden) maintain the tracks once a month. They do this by going very slowly with a special train that basically runs with the brakes on throwing sparks all over with all the noise you can imagine. And since it's going to slowly, they have to do it when there are the fewest number of other trains running, i.e. at three in the morning.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#399

Post by jackvalentine »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #395
jackvalentine wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we’re going to be investing public money and ripping up/modifying the current infrastructure I’d actually prefer we just focus on the usual goals of urbanism and deprecate the car from the picture.

Only a small fraction of people will give up their cars, but I do hope the no-car evangelism takes off. Y'all can ride the trolley with stops every quarter mile while I just cruise on the now empty roads in my own personal car, parking right next to my jobs front door. Thanks.

What an odd thing to say.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#400

Post by seanmcdirmid »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #397
eru wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by reasonable doubt? If you are in a car and you hit someone, it should be your fault. If the road is bad, you should drive slow enough that it's not dangerous. If you can't see anything, because there are cars parked, perhaps you shouldn't drive, or only drive very slowly. It should be your responsibility as a driver to only drive when the view ain't obscured. When I'm eg running around with a knife…

Again, the fact that the roads are designed so poorly for this still gives drivers too much sympathy from authorities, regulators, and the general public. It literally can happen to anyone who decides to drive at all, given that visibility is so messed up. The ditch will heavily sanction a driver and go through a likely redesign when an accident happens. You can’t just expect drivers to do the right thing, you have t…

Ditch -> Dutch
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