Happy to answer any questions
Link below is a dramatized account of the events, couldn't find anything less editorialized, sorry!
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a19177797/self-driving-tru...
https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/599d39e79f59ae00017e2107/5c1...
... during lane change? ... on highway?
That was the paragraph I found interesting. It seems to me in the worst case scenario from what I can tell it just slams the brakes and hopes for the best. It would be interesting to hear a response of what the truck would do in a jamming situation. I assume since it would not lose it cameras and other sensors it would slow down and pull over.
- they could use vehicle-mounted transceivers with much better antennas
- they could use redundant transceivers on different networks
- they could map out routes with best signal. Remember this is last mile only, so it's not a huge area. Instead of going the shortest way a la Waze, optimize the route for best signal.
> ... during lane change?
Apart from being more in the way, how does this differ from having to stop within a lane?
> ... on highway?
The article says its automated driving on the highway.
I'm curious as to the ways that the self driving problems in trucks might be different to the problems of self driving cars. For example, with heavy trucks, your braking distance must be a lot larger than a normal car. So things like following distance must be different. Also having to worry about skidding and the direction the trailer might move.
Also, I imagine that you have to be pretty careful about cars cutting you off. It seems to happen all the time on the road, and is more dangerous than people give it credit for.
Right on the money. If you slam on the brakes on a truck, you and your trailer can jack-knife, sending the trailer the wrong direction. It's a more complicated controls problem than in a car as well!
> Also, I imagine that you have to be pretty careful about cars cutting you off. It seems to happen all the time on the road, and is more dangerous than people give it credit for.
I've spent hundreds of hours in our truck over the last 3 years and my god drivers are absolutely terrible around trucks. You have an incredible view of the road from up on high in a semi, and the spatial awareness compared to a sedan is way better, so the crazy maneuvers happening around us seem a lot crazier. In California trucks can only go 55 mph, so we get a lot of folks (even in normal driving) trying to speed around us during merges on/off highways.
Are you free to talk about liability concerns? Is there a consensus on how unmanned vehicle will affect the outcome of a suit arising from any accident. I assume these trucks have more than every angle covered to protect against false claims
Yes. Starsky early on made a choice that we will operate in an explicitly legal manner, and avoid the grey areas of self-driving. That means a person behind the wheel on public roads in California, but we're all-clear in places like Florida to remove the person behind the vehicle.
> Are you free to talk about liability concerns? Is there a consensus on how unmanned vehicle will affect the outcome of a suit arising from any accident. I assume these trucks have more than every angle covered to protect against false claims
It's still an open question about how best to insure autonomous trucks. Getting a truck on the road, legally able to drive is surprisingly difficult. Watching Starsky struggle from the inside to get our first truck on the road hauling freight at the beginning was sort of a confidence builder in how the DoT and the regulatory organizations work. We are legally insured, both our normal trucks and autonomous trucks. And of course, we've got a ton of cameras in case of an accident.
lol :)
But on point: on I-5, for one example, I've encountered semis doing 80+ MPH in loose groups and not at all unsafely.
It wouldn't take many semis doing only 55 to make life miserable for many of your colleagues and competitors, especially if they face driving-hour limits and logging constraints that you don't. Has that issue been hashed out internally?
That's a blurry line.
We think of it like a spectrum running from hands-on-the-wheel, manual actuation of the brake/throttle/etc. to full autonomy. The middle parts are "supervision" where the human isn't manually pushing the pedals, but might, for instance, tell the truck to take an exit, or slow down, and the truck can do all the acceleration/braking, lane changes, etc on its own.
This pattern of "supervised autonomy", where you automate the low-level (and safety critical) parts, but leave the higher-level decision-making up to humans, has surprisingly broad applicability. That's part of why I'm excited to work here.
Multiple on-board backup locations of numerous video sensors means unless the entire vehicle is torched (and even then), some evidence of the people who carried out the theft will probably survive.
When talking about autonomous platforms, a jammer might no longer be sufficient. If communication is lost, how hard is it to launch a drone (or multiple) whose job it is to keep visual contact with the vehicle while increasing distance, and relay the feed up when communication is re-established (how large an area does a jammer affect?).
There are ways to mitigate these defenses/logging (reduce all unique visuals, stop vehicle in tunnel), but also ways to minimize those mitigations.
I'm not sure it's any easier than when a human is present to defend the goods.
That's no fun for the ICE 20 miles out.
It certainly is something that I think of, but safety engineering requires simpler processes (because simpler means less things need to go right, which is good when things are breaking). I'd rather pay more for cargo insurance than have more complicated logic that causes more accidents with people.
It's pretty easy for a carrier like ourselves to decide how to manage this business process, so we have carte blanche to work with our shipping partners on novel solutions. They're also interested in transparency and speed of transaction, and especially interested in being able to work with a truck that is easily traceable. There are modern shipping depots that have robotic unloading, but also a significant portion of freight is unloaded by the people manning the shipping/receiving offices of our freights' end destination.
[1] https://www.freightwaves.com/news/starsky-robotics-sees-truc...
I'm not entirely familiar with the industry and day-to-day of a trucker, but I'd imagine you'd need some "on the ground" personnel, at least initially, to perform tasks such as fueling on long hauls.
Aside from this, it'd be interesting to see how quickly you can go coast-to-coast without a human needing a break/sleep.
With regards to fueling, there are a good amount of fuel stops around the country that will do "concierge" services for fueling up the truck, giving it a wash, etc. There's some infrastructure in place for when we need to get there.
IANAL, however, a lot of road activity is regulated state-to-state in the US. It turns out to be a really fascinating regulatory problem.
To get a flavor of what we're dealing with, we've had some concerns from law enforcement officials that our tele-op drivers need to be sober, and that officers need some mechanism for administering a field sobriety test to someone who may not even be in the jurisdiction.
IMHO, there needs to be a federal solution to some of this. If it becomes common that vehicles and equipment are operated across state lines, it will become increasingly difficult to comply with every state's rules. That said, unlike some other companies, we are very committed to honoring both the letter and spirit of the law. Our view is that this is an important moment for US civic engagement where industry, labor, insurance, vehicle manufacturers, and the public need to come together and work it out. We explicitly are not taking a "move fast and break things" attitude toward legal compliance.
I wouldn't be surprised if you eventually have to end up getting police to stay on site with the drivers for this scenario.
Sobriety tests not withstanding, your non-security staff probably won't go tackle a teleoperator if they cause a bad accident and try to flee.
that's ridiculous given that similarly important situations happen all over the tech sector, and there are no such police escorts.
I understand the issue, but there aren't any police to tackle rogue actors all over the place. At some point we rely on trusting a professional to be a professional, with retroactive punishment being the ultimate deterrent.
Unless Starsky is hiring people anonymously without payroll or background checks, the identity of the person who flees will be known -- at which case the criminal justice system kicks in and attempts to apprehend and prosecute.
Put another way : Do you often get police escorts on your drive to the grocery store?
My first hacky technical solution? Put a breathalyzer on the teleoperation terminal. A high count calls up some supervisors and disallows the use of the terminal. No cops needed.
Is this practical? Is it responsible? No, probably not -- but it's nowhere near as impractical or irresponsible as wasting hours of on-site police during all hours of operation.
One officer on site also doing physical security and consulting elsewhere is definitely not impractical.
I’m sure drone pilots in the military aren’t sitting by themselves. Rarely are any tech people under DOT or highway patrol scrutiny because they don’t put lives at risk by operating heavy machinery while drunk/high
Have you experimented with stereo cameras for telepresence? How does it compare with multiple fixed cameras?
An automation/teleoperation seems like a great solution for this problem.
Why aren't more teams doing that ?