This Year, Autonomous Trucks Will Take to the Road with No One on Board
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
Add it to the pile! http://rodneybrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/SelfDrivi...
(from recent HN post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706436)
Somehow I've managed to miss that trucks are better for this stuff not just because of the type of driving they do, but also because they're trucks! Being bigger gives them some advantages.
"Trucks are also a better platform for autonomy, with their large size providing more power for computers and an improved field of view for sensors, which can be mounted higher off the ground."
I’ve only ever owned small cars, and in the handful of times I’ve needed to drive a U-haul truck or similar the trip started with trepidation. But I quickly discovered that other drivers have a strong tendency (self-interested, of course) to help big trucks out.
I'm no expert but "power for computers" doesnt strike me as a bottleneck, Geohot/Comma seem to be doing fine, this just sounds like marketing bs
I have run these essays by engineers at Waymo, Lyft, Uber, Nuro, etc and they have verified all of the information (I've incorporated any feedback).
(This isn't intended as a personal attack)
the is solvable. you can buy bigger alternators, and in some cases there is enough room that they will even fit... However it is an additional upgrade that needs to be considered.
With 600 amps@24V one has 10 kW power for computers and the truck. That’s what 300 decent graphic cards consume.
Even if a driver had to be present when they got off the highway, I think 'long haul' should be naturally the first thing to be tackled.
And I'm surprised Walmart isn't leading the way, they should be.
I've always wondered about what happens when the system really gets off the 'happy path'. Maybe there's an accident, and police are directing traffic? Does the truck understand hand gestures (which aren't necessarily standardized)? Or maybe the police aren't there yet, damaged cars are blocking the road, and the truck may need to get out of the way for emergency services to arrive (possibly requiring going a little off road). These happen less on highways, but they still certainly happen, and not having a human in the loop can make things dramatically worse.
Do they have to stop at weigh stations? Do they understand the signage? I suppose most would have the system where you don't have to stop, but I don't know if all weigh stations support that.
There are lots of instances you can imagine that don't require driving skills, but actually require a general intelligence with knowledge of the world around them.
(I suppose you can have a command center where someone can take control or give commands to the truck. Sounds tricky but possible).
The big truck companies are interested in this. They mostly highway travel so a team of trucker drivers in each city isn't as logistically difficult. Plus they can promise their drivers home each night instead of twice a month.
It's a great idea.
Walmart should be taking much more initiative in all of this as one of the only entities that can feasibly take on Amazon.
I wish the President would make a national strategy over this 'Digital Pathways Act 2030' - i.e. make all major highways, railroads, and other 'rights of way' completely autonomous and electric by 2030.
Even for human passenger cargo - long-haul buses may actually compete with trains on price and comfort if they were fully autonomous - especially for shorter routes.
One of the problems with 'trains' in America is that the US is a little spread out, trains can't just go downtown to downtown - but autonomous buses could.
So this could be like quasi-public transport initiative from at very least New England down to DC - that entire corridor.
What we need is someone to 're-brand' bus travel and make it social acceptable for middle/upper class folks to ride instead of the agrarian/lower-class greyhound. Nothing against greyhound but it's just not the experience many people want.
That said, if this team can make it work, power to them!
Edit: I realize this might sound dismissive. I worked on perception tasks for autonomous driving, and believe FSD can be done. I just don't feel that it's a year away, but I'd love to be wrong!
[1] https://www.therobotreport.com/starsky-robotics-co-founder-o...
And people wonder why living standards have not gone up since this idea grabbed a hold in society in the 1970's
My understanding of the data is that living standards have fallen because wages for most workers have been fairly stagnate since the 70s while the price things like housing and healthcare has skyrocketed.
You cannot legally build a nuclear reactor in a normal way. You have to design it completely and then get it approved before you build it. This costs around $500 million dollars, as NuPower has shown. If you change the design much at all you have to get it approved all over again. Thus only one new reactor design in the US has been approved for 50 years and it still has not been built yet.
These trucks will be robbed. I look forward to LIDAR invisible, reflective cars in the next fast and furious installment.
But yeah, I think most truck jackings are targeted and often involve insiders, or occasionally a driver leaves the truck unsecured and someone drives off but that’s rare.
And if it is even sort of a problem, companies shipping valuable stuff aren't just going to do nothing about it.
A less risky crime, both in the face of opposition by a potentially armed driver, and the potential criminal justice consequences.
How does it benefit the greater good to treat this a different, and I assume, more severe, crime than simple burglary of an unoccupied building?
But people rob banks, where they're also 100% guaranteed to be on camera and automatically involves an FBI investigation. As well as having a surprisingly low average haul (a few thousand dollars).
A few months ago I listed an old LCD TV on Craigslist. A bunch of offers fussed about coming to get it, and I ended up picking the most polite one and delivered it. I could barely even give it away!
My understanding is the most common thing to do is take the trailer when the truck is parked and the driver is away.
Anyway, the human is a witness which adds problems.
He's also a potential murder victim, which drives up the potential legal consequences by a lot.
I don't have much real world experience with heist execution, so take my speculation for what it is.
Because an automated truck will not have cameras all around it and also inside, and will phone home whenever some alert has been triggered?
Just a truck bed. Maybe one with a cab on it to stop the weather, but 8-10ft would be enough. I could send it to get my groceries, have it follow me places if I need to take something with me, and send it to my family if they need to give me something.
Rental truck beds would be even better. I could order one, have it go pick up my curbside order from Home Depot and the Grocery Store, and then drop it off at my house. Then I could send it back to the rental facility. Likewise, companies could buy them to deliver for the last mile.
Is anyone working on this?
The leading lorry shut down when recent earthworks caused an unexpected input.
Idea: Self-driving goods transport
End Result: Exabytes of new public surveillance data gifted to LEO and other powerful interests
That’s the reason for a dual tire setup as it’s designed for this kind of redundancy.
What are 3.5 million people going to do if they're suddenly out of a job and have to change career completely?
I am far from being a Trump supporter, but it would be easy for authoritarian politicians to ride to the White House on the grievances of millions of voters who had their livelihoods taken away from them by automation. Trump's promises to bring back manufacturing jobs were fueled by the automation and outsourcing that have already eliminated millions of positions. So Trump's victory in 2016 was already due in part to a backlash against automation.
No society where an average person - of average intelligence, average skills, average potential - cannot make a good living for themselves, can survive as a civilized society.
We can't all be developers, engineers, or doctors.
Sadly, press releases, PowerPoint decks, heavily edited videos on YouTube, and even artificial demos in tightly controlled environments are not enough.
There's a precedent for this. Back in the early part of the 20th century the number of people working in the horse trade fell dramatically as horses were replaced with automobiles. Society survived.
I'm not saying those things will happen now too (we would never see extremist violence in this day and age, would we?) but given that history tells us that when large numbers of young-middle aged men are underemployed, you get violence, crime, and deaths of despair, perhaps we would be wise to spend some time thinking through how to help those people reestablish their connections to society.
I'd also be interested in what the median age range is for truckers. If adoption is sufficiently long term (20 years wouldn't surprise me), the economic pain might be surprisingly minimal due to people aging out of the workforce.
Through this history people have always been worried about those whose jobs are automated, but they've always, on average at least, managed to find new and better paying jobs.
It's important to understand that 3.5m jobs won't disappear in a month. It will take at least a decade to switch around an industry this big, and people will have time to adjust.
Also, this means transportation will be cheaper and faster (computers don't need sleep), which benefits everyone.
> No society where an average person - of average intelligence, average skills, average potential - cannot make a good living for themselves, can survive as a civilized society.
I'm actually also worried about this, but I think it's a separate issue.
There just are not enough opportunities for average or poor people to find meaningful quality work. Going to work as a cog at some global chain store will keep you alive barely but good luck being able to buy a home or have children.
Housing is through the roof, the education system is a scam using undischargable debt to turn our youth into indentured servants. Almost every American is 1 health care crisis away from bankruptcy. We are living in a powder keg.
I am seeing a lot of evictions where I live. Food bank lines are miles long.
It feels like identity politics are being used to distract us from how dire things are becoming for literally everyone not in the 1%
It's a valid remark to make, since people lose their jobs to automation or outsourcing or whatnot all the time. But overall, global unemployment rates don't seem to be affected by new inventions, instead new jobs are invented all the time.
I mean a shit job that nobody should pursue as a career now is gig economy stuff; underpaid taxi driver / delivery person, there have to be millions doing these kinds of jobs now.
Anyway I do agree, not everyone can go for the high tech / high paid jobs. But the country can accommodate for it; give everyone equal opportunities by funding education (instead of relying on meritocratic scholarships and / or lifelong loans (the phrase indentured servitude comes to mind), do a state fund and set price limits on education). Make more jobs viable by raising the minimum wage, restricting the gig economy, setting work hours and day restrictions (e.g. 0 hour on-call contracts), basic worker protection laws and stuff. And finally, applying downward pressure on the cost of living so everyone can live comfortably regardless of job.
Everyone should be able to do a 40 hour work week if they choose to, no more than that unless they get paid 150%, and less if they choose to. And people working like that should be able to live in a reasonable distance from where they work.
The alternative is the "working poor", homelessness, working multiple jobs, working 80 hour weeks just to meet bare necessities, etc. This is already the reality for a lot of people.
So people are thinking about it.
Retire, given the average age of a truck driver is between 45 and 55 depending on which article bemoaning a shortage of truck drivers you care to read. In practice, of course, 'under limited conditions, maybe' isn't going to automate away 3.5 million jobs, and we still hire people to drive trains despite full autonomy for trains being well-established reliable tech.
Inequality in society, driven by poor early family life and environment for many (leading to many issues including poor education) is a real problem for 'the West', and especially the US.