Given how much these likely cost to make and that they're unmanned, makes me wonder how they plan to keep drone jackers from capturing them for ransom; especially given the NYT supplied that the hangar is in Alameda, Calif.
There's likely to be a significant period between the first driver-less trucks transporting goods across unpopulated areas and the vehicles being competent enough to detect the fact that someone is unloading the vehicle and that that car sitting in front of you is not traffic, but is just there to make you stop while you are pilfered.
The move from a crime involving people to one only involving property may well lower the bar to would be criminals.
To figure out which truck has the iPads and get away with them you'd need:
- an insider to know the time and content of the truck
- stop the truck
- unload the truck at the spot (it will refuse to move your way)
- deal with an alarm system (maybe lights and sirens)
- get away and sell all the high value goods despite their serial numbers
Should it become a problem we'll just ship all the boring stuff autonomously and the rest with a guard that needs no extra breaks and can sleep on the road.
Just like they do with armed truck robberies today.
The first autonomous trucks will be convoys following a truck with an actual driver though.
Run into one in a fibreglass yacht and you could be having a very bad day.
Not to mention that you need a ship, probably multiple people and quite a bit of time to find such a drone, which I imagine you don't want to do too close to the coast. I doubt this can be done in an economical fashion especially considering opportunity costs. Anyone who's able to do this can probably get a more stable and higher income trafficking drugs.
Also, would not be suprised if the security on these are relaxed for bandwidth reasons, or if the command and control center might be easily compromised.