Out of curiosity, how do they handle the transmissions in self-driving trucks? My guess was automatics, but torque converter automatics aren't strong enough for use in a big-rig like this. DSG? Fully "automatic" clutch-based manuals? These things have to be pretty expensive.
Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days
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Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days
#82For better or worse, millions of truck drivers are going to be displaced. Just like the way robots replaced manufacturing jobs. The best plan is to prepare, like Yang and others are saying: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/trucking-czar/ So we can soften the blow.
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Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days
#83[deleted]
Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days
#84Out of curiosity, how do they handle the transmissions in self-driving trucks? My guess was automatics, but torque converter automatics aren't strong enough for use in a big-rig like this. DSG? Fully "automatic" clutch-based manuals? These things have to be pretty expensive.
Series hybrid aka diesel-electric may work.
Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days
#85“the truck drove mostly autonomously.” That last 10% is going to be a lot of work. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule
it's worse than that, of course. You'll find, like a certain Greek philosopher fond of asking annoying questions, that the first 90% of the last 10% will be OK, and that last 10% will be the other 90% of the ... etc. etc. etc.
Huh? The comment you're replying to says the first 90% of the work is easy and the last 10% is difficult. What you're saying is very much not "worse than that"; you're saying the first 90% is easy, then it's a small jump to the first 99%, and then just a bit more to the first 99.9%...
That's a huge improvement over the last 10% being difficult!
Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Handling that 10% is going to be tricky, though. Can an unpiloted truck be trusted to know its limitations perfectly, shutdown and park when it hits borderline road conditions? Edit: Okay, remote driver access might solve this.
Judging by how frequently I occasionally lose internet connection for a mile or two in my major metro area for even basic tasks, like Siri dictation or streaming audio, I can't imagine how remote takeover could possibly be the answer to the "10%" situation unless we're prepared for some percentage of the time we are faced with a truck that simply gives up, puts on four-way flashers and comes to a stop wherever it may…
> Judging by how frequently I occasionally lose internet connection for a mile or two in my major metro area for even basic tasks, like Siri dictation or streaming audio, I can't imagine how remote takeover could possibly be the answer to the "10%" situation
I mean, it's possible that demand for self-driving trucks means reliable wireless connections get implemented everywhere they can drive.
Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably refueling. I can't imagine the truck drives into a truck stop autonomously.
I wish I had posted this link..it’s a much better one and gives more details https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/plusai-autonomous-truck... [..]To comply with hours of service (HOS) requirements, Shawn Kerrigan, COO and co-founder of Plus.ai, told Supply Chain Dive that the truck driver took over when getting off the highway for rest stops and breaks, otherwise, he said the journey was completed autonomously.[..]
I’ve driven this route before. What’s remarkable about it is how unremarkable it is. The only thing could be a possible risk would be a snowstorm in Colorado. Otherwise the route is basically one long boring ride. Maybe the Las Vegas 95-15 intersection presents a challenge? St Louis and Kansas City have some transitions. Everywhere else - Mojave, Utah, Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, PA is all relatively straight, without obstacles and rural. Even the 78 to 309 transition to Quakertown is a fairly pedestrian two lane merge. I guess my point is if you’re gonna do a 3000 mile butter run, it could get any easier. Personally I would have hired a 78 Trans Am and shipped a container’s worth of Coors.
Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days
#88Out of curiosity, how do they handle the transmissions in self-driving trucks? My guess was automatics, but torque converter automatics aren't strong enough for use in a big-rig like this. DSG? Fully "automatic" clutch-based manuals? These things have to be pretty expensive.
With a diesel you can pretty much drop it into the appropriate adjacent gear and let the synchros handle it. The RPM band is pretty narrow.
Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days
#89Sure, it proved it can do an autonomous truck Cannonball run, but why not produce and use locally? Not as some hippy-dippy thing, but it seems like a waste of petroleum to truck products clear across the entire country when there's enough land and resources to make the same or similar products nearer to the points of consumption. Common. sense.
Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's worse than that, of course. You'll find, like a certain Greek philosopher fond of asking annoying questions, that the first 90% of the last 10% will be OK, and that last 10% will be the other 90% of the ... etc. etc. etc.
In 1995 having a domestic phone call, placed on a wired line, drop due to line issues was effectively inconceivable -- it simply would never happen. In 2015 we were in a time when it happened all the time, people simply accepted that voip was often unreliable. In 2019 the idea of a vehicle around you simply stopping because its driver doesn't know how to handle a situation is extremely rare. I suspect that by 2039 it…
True ... I kind of forgot how reliable analogue tone switching were. Someone cut of the wire once in the road. It's like I see more and more cars stuck at the roadside. Atleast in the 90s the drove until they started to smoke.