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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

#91

Post by ZeroGravitas »

With new markets you often want to target a small niche, I've always thought that relatively slow moving road trains travelling at night would be a good place to start.

Air resistance means slower speeds are more efficient (you don't need to worry about human driver needing paid per hour or limited by regulations).

Less other traffic at night, but (presumably) sensors can be designed to work well in these situations.

If you split a truck in 3 it can travel together as a pack for aero yet reduce stopping times as each part brakes seperately.

You could probably even section off an entire lane in certain areas.

Some of these possibly needed EVs to mature more before they become practical.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#92

Post by sva_ »

I've been observing that AI tools often don't really replace people, but rather amplify the amount of work that a single individual can do. In that way, rather than seeking to replace truck drivers, it might first be more useful to make it possible that one driver can navigate two trucks in tandem, and later perhaps more. The largest issue with autonomous driving seems to be the ~20% edge cases that may occur, and have high variance, and ~80% could be automated. So perhaps at some point a single driver could drive more than one or two trucks.

It seems like there are a lot of 'default routes' that trucks take, and in the beginning, it'd probably just be a small number of highway routes that could get clearance in such a way, and then scale up.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#93

Post by coryrc »

Havoc wrote: post #69

Yes trucks slow down slower than cars but that's just physics. You've got the exact same problem with humans driving under say rainy or foggy conditions. If anything driverless helps dramatically on this front. If you can run trucks 24/7 without stopping then you can cut their speed say 33% or whatever and still come out on top. You can also adjust the cargo to reduce stopping distance - use autonomous truckers for t…

Adding more wheels does not reduce stopping distance.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#94

Post by bluGill »

jampekka wrote: post #78
fallingknife wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that if you have safer than human systems but you don't deploy them it's basically killing people. If you had autonomous driving that was 90% as deadly as the average human driver, not deploying it would cause 4000 deaths every year in the US.

We have a lot safer transportation systems than private cars but don't deploy them. Is this basically killing people too? Driving is murder?

Yes. There are a lot of people who are driving for things that a good public transit system could handle. Sure you can have your SUV for towing the boat to the lake - but you only do that on weekends (and no every weekend) - why are you driving to work, to church, get groceries - for most people those are tasks that that a good transit system could handle.

Note that by good transit system I mean one where you never check the schedule because the next bus/train is never more than 5 minutes (that is a maximum time). By good transit I also mean a system of transfers to express service so you can get to more distance places quickly. Nobody in the US has a good system (NYC's subways don't even come that often!), but there is no reason we can't have that, and some places in the world do have it (at least for a few).

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#95

Post by alemanek »

jmull wrote: post #80
Havoc wrote: post #69

Yes trucks slow down slower than cars but that's just physics. You've got the exact same problem with humans driving under say rainy or foggy conditions. If anything driverless helps dramatically on this front. If you can run trucks 24/7 without stopping then you can cut their speed say 33% or whatever and still come out on top. You can also adjust the cargo to reduce stopping distance - use autonomous truckers for t…

> …you can cut their speed say 33%… You probably can’t have cars going 70 or faster sharing the road with trucks going a steady 45.

In the US there are lots of long 3-4 lane highway stretches where this is perfectly fine. Also we already see this on mountain ascents. Plenty of times I have seen trucks climbing a pass at 30-45mph in the right lane and cars zipping up it at 80mph in the left lane.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#96

Post by ben_w »

Edman274 wrote: post #26

I often see logic along the lines of "if autonomous vehicles are safer than people, then let's deploy them" and that logic straight-up does not fly in the real world. In the real world, among the techno-pessimists, that is an outrageously low bar. Most accidents and deaths that happen because of human drivers occur because the driver was doing something illegal, which means the bar that we have for even humans is hig…

I agree, though I either don't see (or I see and misperceive) many examples of people mistaking the utilitarian result for the politically acceptable one.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#97

Post by bluGill »

foofie wrote: post #53
Edman274 wrote: post #26

I often see logic along the lines of "if autonomous vehicles are safer than people, then let's deploy them" and that logic straight-up does not fly in the real world. In the real world, among the techno-pessimists, that is an outrageously low bar. Most accidents and deaths that happen because of human drivers occur because the driver was doing something illegal, which means the bar that we have for even humans is hig…

> We'd demand a way higher standard because these companies don't really have any skin in the game, except for financial penalties which we now understand is not a deterrent for anything. I'll add that one of the penalties for accidents caused by human error is a prison term. Until a Tesla/Uber/Waymo exec responsible for autonomous driving can serve a prison term for accidents caused by their service, the penalty for…

> one of the penalties for accidents caused by human error is a prison term.

Really? How does anyone get that. I've only seen murder with a car worth 90 days in jail and loss of the car.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#98

Post by rexreed »

sva_ wrote: post #92

I've been observing that AI tools often don't really replace people, but rather amplify the amount of work that a single individual can do. In that way, rather than seeking to replace truck drivers, it might first be more useful to make it possible that one driver can navigate two trucks in tandem, and later perhaps more. The largest issue with autonomous driving seems to be the ~20% edge cases that may occur, and ha…

This is called "augmented Intelligence": https://www.cognilytica.com/ai-today-podcast-020-augmented-i...

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#100

Post by bluGill »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #91

With new markets you often want to target a small niche, I've always thought that relatively slow moving road trains travelling at night would be a good place to start. Air resistance means slower speeds are more efficient (you don't need to worry about human driver needing paid per hour or limited by regulations). Less other traffic at night, but (presumably) sensors can be designed to work well in these situations.…

Trucks pay for more than air resistance though. Last I talked to a trucker their computer was set at 68mph because the company had data showing that was the most efficient speed. Engines get more fuel efficient the more load they are under. There is also the constant load of the lights. With autonomous trucks the computer/sensors is source of constant load.
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