stefan8r

TuSimple has definitely been doing some great stuff. We did a similar test (w/freight) for the first time in January 2017...have have been doing that a lot over the last 15 months

That's a fair thought when you compare unmanned trucks to O/Os, who really do bust their butts to make sure the freight gets there.

The use case that we're solving to is the big company driver who, at the first sight of trouble, calls dispatch to send out a tow truck so that they don't waste precious hours of service. The folks who use the full-service gas stations to fill up.

A lot of long-haul truck driving has already been setup to limit the participation of the on-board driver. We're just taking that a step further.

We started doing that in April of last year, is how it's different.

There's an initiative to move to autopilot for trains, or Positive Train Control. The US Gov't started the initiative in 2008 after a particularly gnarly train accident which killed 25 people. It was due to be rolled out in 2015 and we're still waiting...

For long-haul rail freight the economics don't matter as much as they do for trucks. 1-2 people can control a 7 mile train as opposed to trucks which have 1 driver per 50' trailer.

/SSA

This is Stefan, from Starsky Robotics.

I hear this all the time, and honestly in many cases a truck is the transportation of last resort. If you need 5 shipping containers of goods going from A->B all arriving at Time X; it's probably going by train.

An issue with rail (as pointed out by others) is how to haul the freight from the rail head (rail yard) to the end warehouses, and the extra time it takes to have goods go on two trucks and one train instead of just one truck. The other issue is that in the US it's really hard to hire and retain long haul truck drivers (it turns out most people want to go home each night after a hard day’s work).

Competition to hire drivers is fierce, and driver turnover can be 100%/yr...which means sometimes your drivers don't show up to pull your freight. Rail is also generally cheaper so if you can put your goods on the train you do.

As far as wear and tear on the highway: that's what weigh stations are for. They not only assign usage taxes, they also make sure weight is evenly distributed across the axles to limit damage to the road.

/SSA

Starsky Robotics | San Francisco | Full time | Onsite with relocation assistance available

We're making driverless trucks a reality, and have autonomously moved freight on the highway. We need help with:

Commercial Truck Driver Computer Vision Controls Engineering Data Analysis Machine Learning Operations Test Engineering Other

Send an email to jobs@starskyrobotics.com or apply at starskyrobotics.com