Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

kevinchen.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 435 posts

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#421

Post by eru »

rdtsc wrote: post #420
eru wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can already try to jam GPS, and many people will be lost.

But jamming GPS is both highly illegal, and a high powered jammer is relatively easy to track down.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#422

Post by eru »

kevinchen wrote: post #404
eru wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe the MTBF argument still applies to Starlink. Regarding the minimal risk condition / fallback behavior, a central point of the article was that slowing or stopping are almost always unacceptable on freeways because of the speeds involved

You wouldn't want to stop suddenly as your fallback behaviour, when too many operators are busy.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#423

Post by eru »

Eisenstein wrote: post #381
eru wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My own adopted home of Singapore is highly industrialised, and building more rail lines. China is reasonably industrialised and building more rail lines. Spain is building more, etc.

You can do some web searches. Alas, it's a bit hard, because Google seems to insists that I am only interested in new _high-speed_ rail lines, instead of all new rail lines. But if you are willing to only look at those, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_high-speed_rail_by_co... has a list.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#424

Post by WirelessGigabit »

pests wrote: post #351
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…

I believe you, but why does your source claim otherwise? "Under PSR, freight trains operate on fixed schedules, much like passenger trains, instead of being dispatched whenever a sufficient number of loaded cars are available." So do they leave on a fixed schedule, or is there no fixed time? It sounds like the previous system had no fixed time (leave when ready) whereas in the PSR world - there is in fact a set sched…

They don't leave on fixed time. This is a big part of the union complaints. The engineer needs to be on standby and be there in 2 (?) hours when the train is 'full'.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dgezn/the-worst-and-most-eg...

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#425

Post by p_j_w »

manquer wrote: post #346
p_j_w wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most heavy passenger rail like Amtrak and things like Caltrain in the Bay Area, it's because those trains use the same tracks as freight companies and the freight traffic takes priority.

That is not true for Caltrain . Caltrain tracks and right of way was purchased in 1991 from Southern Pacific (now Union Pacific) by Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board which is basically Muni, SamTrans and VTA for most of the route. Here is a detailed map of who owns what https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2009/01/caltrain-right-of-... While it is true that Southern Pacific owned the line for most its history it was…

I stand corrected, thank you.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#426

Post by pests »

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #424
pests wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you, but why does your source claim otherwise? "Under PSR, freight trains operate on fixed schedules, much like passenger trains, instead of being dispatched whenever a sufficient number of loaded cars are available." So do they leave on a fixed schedule, or is there no fixed time? It sounds like the previous system had no fixed time (leave when ready) whereas in the PSR world - there is in fact a set sched…

They don't leave on fixed time. This is a big part of the union complaints. The engineer needs to be on standby and be there in 2 (?) hours when the train is 'full'. https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dgezn/the-worst-and-most-eg...

My issue is Wikipedia claims it does not work this way anymore. They do not leave when the train is full - they leave on a fixed schedule.

Why is everyone here claiming that is not true? Is Wikipedia wrong?

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#427

Post by WirelessGigabit »

pests wrote: post #426
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't leave on fixed time. This is a big part of the union complaints. The engineer needs to be on standby and be there in 2 (?) hours when the train is 'full'. https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dgezn/the-worst-and-most-eg...

My issue is Wikipedia claims it does not work this way anymore. They do not leave when the train is full - they leave on a fixed schedule. Why is everyone here claiming that is not true? Is Wikipedia wrong?

So I started to read more, and you're right.

I spend a lot of time reading to what the union members said.

E.g.: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkzbq/28-freight-rail-worke....

That sentence doesn't match with the idea of a fixed schedule. A fixed schedule doesn't require you to be on-call, because you know when the train will leave.

I'm confused now.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#428

Post by datameta »

sarchertech wrote: post #273
datameta wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately not all governments are terrible at rail infra planning/upkeep. Perhaps autonomous trucks as you outline could do the last X miles from the point the train offloads.

The US is number 3 in the world in both total tonne-kilometers and tonne-kilometers per capita shipped by rail, and it’s in the top 10 in percentage of freight moved by rail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...

I could been specific - I mean passenger rail.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#429

Post by throwaway2037 »

eru wrote: post #423
Eisenstein wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And quite a few industrialised countries around the world are building more rail lines. Can you expound on this?

My own adopted home of Singapore is highly industrialised, and building more rail lines. China is reasonably industrialised and building more rail lines. Spain is building more, etc. You can do some web searches. Alas, it's a bit hard, because Google seems to insists that I am only interested in new _high-speed_ rail lines, instead of all new rail lines. But if you are willing to only look at those, https://en.wikipe…

The original post suggested to build more passenger rails to reduce burden upon freight rails. Does Singapore move any freight by rail?

Also, the original post wrote:

> 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.

My reply was specific to that. Saying: The original post says little because _no_ highly industrialised nation could build a freight network from scratch given current land and noise constraints.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#430

Post by throwaway2037 »

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…

Freight is noisy in the US for two reasons: (1) much heavier than trucks on poorly maintained tracks and (2) required horn blaring for safety at road crossings.
Post reply on HN