Tired of waiting for driverless vehicles? Head to a farm

A trend that has been going on for several decades.

https://www.automate.org/blogs/the-history-of-robotics-in-th...

Self driving tractors and self driving cars have much different safety features. Don't get me wrong, tractors should absolutely be smart enough to handle wildlife like that. But comparing the two is unfair.

Having driven a tractor on my parents' farm, I can confirm this. It is so mindless it is not boring, because you can think of other things.

Once the tractor is out in the field it can be automated rather easily yes. The tech makes sense on big farms with flat fields and no wild animals. Woods and non-flat terrain, different story.

home has likely more (pedestrian) traffic than farm field

A lot further than self driving cars with PRT in fact.

3D rail routing, factory pallet->shop direct delivery, 300mph point to point access, easy emergency and disabled access, no batteries to manufacture, no real land use issues (just poles in the ground for hanging systems), fast infra build out using prefabricated track, simultaneous electricity, transport, power (solar, on the top of hanging rails) and telecoms build out with the rail infra. Fully decentralised infra once several tracks are interconnected.

Land and fertile farmland are very different things.

What are some of the things you'd like to see in industrial manufacturing and engineering?

Canals (or at least narrow, shallow British-style canals) would be a surprisingly difficult environment to design an automated system for. Vessels whose awkward handling is heavily affected by highly variable wind, water depth and proximity to banks, overhanging branches, floating rubbish and interactions with other boats whose unpredictable behaviour is usually understood by talking to them. Given the delayed response because 20 ton boats have massive inertia, and can be blown sideways even when brought to a halt I'm not even sure reliable crash avoidance is possible. Plus the real hard work (and risk to humans) is the mooring and the locks.

Certainly a semi or mostly automated system would have its advantages, but not necessarily enough to justify the costs of actually training it for a very small niche market dominated by people proud of using obsolete tech.

Autonomous shipping on the other hand...

Isn’t the point of recreational boating that you drive it yourself? Like with turning the meats when barbecuing? We daddies need something important to do. :)

While not canal boats, some yachts do have varying amount of automation. Some have waypoint systems tied into radar/vision collision avoidance systems which will guide the boat through a series of waypoints and attempt to avoid hitting anything on the water. Obviously you're supposed to still be alert and in control of the boat, but automated systems for cruising around a more open area definitely exists.

You definitely wouldn't want to trust it for any place even slightly crowded though. On a big yacht you'll want to respond to changes quite quickly, and many of those automated collision detection systems are far from perfect.

I live in a rural area and some people are selling their used John Deere machines to buy new ones from other brands due to this problem. It won't surprise me if those other brands invest more in that technology in the next years to be on par to John Deere, and it would be really positive if they force a higher level of repairability.

Anyway, those who sell those products probably would also sell the autonomous technology as a service more than a one pay product. If those services are arriving in the car market I doubt that machinery industry would reject earning a periodical income in addition to machine sales.

Without using AI there have been substantial improvements already - I was home for harvest on my family farm last year, driving a JD S970 (last time I drove was a CTSII about 10 years ago). 40 ft front, gps auto steer, radar controlled front height - cognitively it was 10% of what it was 15 years ago.

My uncle had a new X series with a 60ft front that also slaves the chaser bin for unloading so you’re basically automating the unloading as well - it’s wild.

Our country is all to undulating I think to be even close to being fully autonomous anytime in the next 2.0 years but it will be interesting to see how this all develops.

10 years ago the talk of remote tractors was to have one lead manned machine with 1-3 ‘slaves’ machines following behind so the one operator can manage a much bigger area, it’s interesting that this doesn’t seem to be the way they’re going

But I don't want to driving a vehicle on the same road I am on. Well, not exactly you but, you know, those idiots.