Garbage men, circa 1990. "I'll always have a job. Who's going to lift those cans into the truck but us?"
When I see them haul a load of logs out of Pecwan I will believe it.
Driverless cars, or driverless trucks, on any type of large scale.....are not going to happen.
There a large differences between the world of Google (computers, software, internet) and the world of automobiles.
Cars have had computers for a very long time...and they hardly ever fail. This is because the automotive industry (and the automotive consumer) have a very different expectation of their car’s reliability, vs their web browser’s. My Android phone locks up a few times a month...I take the battery out and restart. If my car did this - time for a new car.
Companies like Google will NEVER meet an automotive consumer’s expectation. Nor will Tesla, which has described their product as more software than car. To an IT guy, they think that’s a good thing to boast about. To most of us, it most certainly is not.
Now on to the concept of the driverless car. It uses LIDAR. I am very familiar with LIDAR, and use it at work...so I am no luddite. I am also aware of how much LIDAR costs...a lot. Google claims $70k...which I think is a lowball estimate. Mobile LIDAR starts at $250k. And then there are laser rangefinders and of course, software. And there’s got to be a large computer on board - LIDAR creates huge files, that bog down conventional computers.
So its expensive. Is it effective? I’d love to see how it reacts to a blowout on the interstate, an engine fire, seized brake, etc. I suspect serious shortcomings.
Trucking industry? It boggles my mind to contemplate how a driverless truck could enter a factory, weigh in, find the right spot to dock, open its own doors or take its own tarp off, weigh out, inspect itself for proper lights and tires, and refuel itself, before getting back on the road.
Or what about a truck with multiple deliveries...who installs load locks...who keeps client #1 from pilfering some of client #2’s delivery?
I’m sure a system that overcomes all of these problems is technically possible...but not reasonably cost effective at all.
What an opportunity for computer hackers.
Can you imagine someone hacking into the network controlling the car or the wifi used to link it to whatever.
It would be like the Grand Theft Auto video game to them.
Roads Must Roll
What could possibly go wrong?
I have a 2014 Jeep Cherokee. It can drive on the freeway by itself a ways (lane control, adaptive cruise control). I drove from Truckee (past the inspection station) to Roseville without touching the brake or accelerator. It just occured to me that if it was red in color I could have named it “Redskin”.
Just like most large passenger aircraft fly today (for 98 percent of the trip).;
Garbage men, circa 1990. "I'll always have a job. Who's going to lift those cans into the truck but us?"
Not to worry. I think they hired a lot of the talented programmers who brought us obamacare. What could possibly go wrong?
Going to be a lot less dead hookers...
Today, a doublestack container train can haul 250 full-loaded freight containers with only five locomotives (three in front, one in the middle and one in the rear operated in distributed power control fashion). And improvements in technology could push that to 300 per train.
With the major railroads spending many billions on double-tracking many long distance routes or putting in longer sidings on single-track lines, we are seeing a revolution where more and more freight are moved by container trains, taking more and more truck traffic off the highways. The days of the long-distance trucker may be soon waning.
Aw, flipping the bird and road rage won't be any fun anymore.
Leni
I wonder how you would prevent carjackings?
I would have a great difficulty backing the trailer to the dock through a complicated grid of obstacles. It would take me several tries, and a few scratches on the vehicle.
However I can program the path for the robot driver in such a way that it can drive in reverse at 10 mph without ever stopping at any of those obstacles. The path of a complex vehicle may be hard for a human to predict; however it is a trivial task for a computer. Not many humans can continuously steer and observe all the volume of the vehicle. Not all humans have eyes on eyestalks to see from the end of the trailer. Not all humans have enough eyes to see both sides of all vehicles (tractor and trailer) at all times. But a robot can do all that, easily.
A well designed robot driver will be safer and more reliable than any human. As other people already pointed out, the computer does not get tired, drunk, or angry. Its errors will be limited to lack of perception - and given that it "sees" with radars, GPS, and in visible and infrared light, with more than two eyes - it will be exceptionally well aware of the surroundings. Fears about robot drivers are like fears of autopilots. But the Shuttle flew to the orbit and back on autopilot - in part because humans are /not capable/ of controlling the vehicle with enough accuracy in space and time.
I hear the problem, though. Yes, truckers - and cab drivers, and many other commercial drivers - will be restricted in employment. They will be doing the last mile, and they will be doing everything else that humans are good at. (Packing and securing of the cargo may be somewhat automated, as it is now with shipping containers.) But even in social sense, there should be no need for a human to sit in a chair for hours, watching the endless hundreds of miles of a freeway.
The problem is caused by the lack of a transition plan from an early, primitive society to an advanced, technological society. We lost hundreds of occupations already - hunters and gatherers are replaced by ranchers and farmers who alone do the work that a whole tribe couldn't do. Now we have access to lots of foods; would we be better off if we could eat only what our wives are able to collect on a given day? As costs of transportation get reduced, the free market will bring the costs of products down as well - trucks are a very expensive mode of transport.
There is yet another interesting aspect. Human-driven trucks cannot be electrically powered because human's time is too expensive. However robot-driven trucks can afford time to charge; this will increase the trip time, but some goods are not sensitive to that, as long as the delivery time is predictable. This will reduce our dependency on oil. (If gas/diesel fuel supplies stop today, half of all Americans will be dead from starvation 2-3 weeks later.)
What should unemployable truckers do? Futurists tell us that they should learn a new occupation. Say, they could become roboticists. We know, of course, that this won't work for most, and it won't be enough anyway. As the society becomes more automated, the mandatory workload on an average human has to decrease, ultimately going to zero when robots do everything. The society, however, does not have a mechanism to do that. Significant changes in methods of production historically resulted in large scale unrest within the society. I am sure Obama is thinking about this problem day and night :-)
Put them on automated tracks, kind of like rails....
if they require gps to navigate when that system fails’onboard or the gps system goes down due to failure or they can’t get a signal where they are...
Would you want to share the road with 100,000 lbs of truck on autopilot?
Ping.
Under the ‘if you know, you know’ category.....
Old ‘story’ in early space days about all the ‘firsts’ and one of them was a human accompanying a monkey on a space flight.
The person kept asking ‘Houston’ what he should do and after 3 days of sitting there observing the monkey do all the work, word from Houston came down
“FEED THE MONKEY”
As long as they come with an inflatable auto-pilot like in the movie Airplane I’m okay with it.