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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

#411

Post by berniedurfee »

AlexandrB wrote: post #260
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 - thi…

There’s a local lumber yard near us with an operational rail line on site. They’ve survived the onslaught of big box stores and are thriving.

I imagine that rail line makes a big difference in being able to keep up with the logistics advantages of 6 big box stores within 30 minutes.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#412

Post by justinjlynn »

Eisenstein wrote: post #382
eru wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Lobby to socialise or externalise all the costs. Work to privatise only the profits. Typical mode of operation.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#413

Post by ChainOfFools »

lelanthran wrote: post #380
ChainOfFools wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trains that make the most noise are diesel-electric, not electric; electric cross country freight trains aren't really a thing here. I don't DE engines have a battery in the conventional sense, although arguably their fuel tender full of diesel is a sort of battery. But in order for a train to be fully electric you would need to have a fully electrified infrastructure for freight rail, which we do not have and wo…

> But in order for a train to be fully electric you would need to have a fully electrified infrastructure for freight rail, which we do not have and would be far-fetched as a solution compared to equipping such trains with a local battery tender when they come into town, in order to move them through the town (somewhat) quietly. after which they can switch back to diesel-electric power for the long cross country runs…

> installing batteries in DE engines

Sadly I think even installing infrastructure for local electrification would not get out of the starting gate, because you need to both modify all of the engines involved, as well as add infrastructure to every affected town with all of the predictable pushback from people who will react negatively the notion of installing a bunch of extremely high power, highly visible catenary on already-dangerous rail paths.

But fortunately we can take advantage of a useful characteristic of trains, which is that it's quite natural to hook up a car called a tender, normally carrying fuel such as diesel or (in the old days) coal but in this case would be a giant battery on wheels that's been pre-charged and positioned on a siding outside of town at the crest of any convenient rise, ready for connection to incoming freight trains. These can then switch off (or idle) their diesel engines and draw on the battery for power as it passes into and out of town. Obviously a fee would be charged, but towns have all the leverage here- it's not as if the freight can just take some other set of train tracks that go around the town to avoid payong it.

This has the benefit of being extremely easy to get by in on, as it makes very little demand of both freight train operators and towns respectively. operators need to add nothing more than a simple transfer switch to the engine (which may already exist) and for the towns, the same high power electric circuit as catenary, minus all the catenar, and located on a short siding safely well out of town. And of course a couple great big batteries, but they are mobile and can go where the yrains are, thus far cheaper than putting poles in the ground everywhere the trains run.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#414

Post by eru »

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…

The American approach is to let driver's get away Scott free.

See eg https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-t...

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#415

Post by caf »

caf wrote: post #261
lpapez wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That equation works for friction between idealized solids. Tires are not even close to an idealized solid, they deform as more weight is added to them, so the contact surface area increases as more pressure is added. That is why you see racing cars with big fat tires, because it's more grip and the relationship is not linear.

That friction equation comes originally from empirical experiments, not from idealised models. The explanation in fact relies on deformable surfaces. If you imagine keeping the normal force constant and reducing the apparent contact area, the pressure on the surfaces will be increased which will cause the surfaces to deform more, resulting in more microscopic points of adhesion.

(If you find this surprising and want to read a little more, try this: https://www.stevemunden.com/friction.html)

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#416

Post by lotsoweiners »

bluGill wrote: post #184
lotsoweiners wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I’d totally take transit so long as it will pick me up in my driveway, is ready within a minute of me deciding I need to leave, and is a ride for only me and my family/friends.

This attitude is why we can't have nice things. You have probably never experienced a system like I outlined and you won't even consider it without adding other requirements that drive up the cost until we cannot get it. If instead you would accept that you can wait up to five minutes, and "other people" are nice enough and so you can share a space with them - we could have a nice transit system. The five minute time…

Just because we both want different things doesn't mean they both can't exist.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#417

Post by jackvalentine »

jeffparsons wrote: post #405
jackvalentine wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your average road train which has restrictions on which roads it can drive on is 3 trailers. 4 trailer trains exist with far stricter limitations. I just don’t see a 12 trailer 140m long road train with wires strung between the bits being feasible in any way on a road that has other, untrained users on it.

Okay, let's ditch the wires and put a battery pack in each trailer skate. If that limits range too much, we can figure out some kind of clever charging or fast battery swap solution. (None of the reasons for the failure of battery swap in passenger cars apply to trucking, AFAIK.)

The wires aren’t the main blocker to my mind - the sheer length of them on existing roads is. There is a reason we don’t do super long trucks already. They would for example block 2/3rds of an onramp merge zone as they passed.

IF we did gigantic trucks they’d be so severely limited in what roads they could use before being ‘broken down’ in to smaller units for the final delivery that we might as well just make trains.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#418

Post by seanmcdirmid »

eru wrote: post #414
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The American approach is to let driver's get away Scott free. See eg https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-t...

The American approach is just idiotic all around. It gives plenty of plausible “accident” explanation given crappy road designs and the lack of will to fix them.

I tell my kid that it will be the car’s fault if they hit you when you are walking out into the street behind some parked cars, but even if they pay some money you’ll still be dead. This is not just about cars being liable (like seriously, get rid of on street parking if you are going to have lots of cyclists and pedestrians on that busy through fare, Seattle sucks at this).

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#419

Post by rdtsc »

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.

I think that’s a great idea. It will increase the cost of the fleet but if it solves the blocking issues it may be worth it. Might even help with logistics and loading and unloading.

Heck, maybe they don’t even need to be articulated. They could look like slightly larger Amazon or UPS delivery vans. No need to worry about jackknifing.

If it’s a fleet maybe battery packs can be swappable so when it arrives at a hub to load/unload it can pick up a charged battery pack.

The only issue is for cargo that can’t be split up.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#420

Post by rdtsc »

eru wrote: post #320
kevinchen wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A centralized control like that coupled with a stop as a safe default would be a very juicy attack target. Want to cripple a city / country or create some chaos? Just jam or hack the control system.
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