I still don't understand why every company doing self driving cars is focusing on consumer cars while no major player is doing interstate trucking. Interstate trucking could pretty much be done now, and has several advantages. Driving on interstate freeways is orders of magnitude easier than driving in a city with pedestrians, bikes, cars parked in the road, etc. And there is a great monetization scheme--no driver means you can get it to its destination more quickly and more cheaply.
(The thought is you'd hand off to a real driver once you get in to a city)
This could be great for freight trucking where they spend majority of time on freeways, which should be easy win for self-driving, and then do the last leg with a virtual, or physical pick-up driver. Likewise for shipping.
I don't follow this space, so forgive me for the ignorance...
But, wouldn't interstate trucking be one of the easiest self driving applications?
Use a driver to get the truck onto the interstate, pull over to the shoulder, set truck in autonomous mode, get out, truck drives close to destination on interstates only, pulls over to shoulder, human driver gets back in...
Seems like a good stop gap solution...
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Edit: So, maybe not the shoulder, but even a truck stop or an easy to navigate to area. Basically, removing the complexity of surface streets...
The thing is, self-driving trucks seem more plausible as something technologically viable compared to self-driving passenger cars. I've heard proposals to have loading docks directly off major highways, so the only driving the things would need to do would on highways (and even in special lanes). At the same time, I wonder what the advantage of this over just trains would be.
I thought that automated trucking was by far the best possible fit for self-driving vehicles. Dealing with the enormous amount of insanity that consumers experience day to day: predominantly residential, stray children/pets/cross walkers, aberrant weather, construction, etc feels insurmountable without actual intelligence.
In contrast, a professional trucking company could have far more reliable interstate-only medium-haul routes. Truck could operate only when conditions are favorable, otherwise human would take that day's route. Auto-Truck would drive from one hub point to another and park itself until a human was available to complete the delivery to the real endpoint. Not sure how well the systems deal with night, but you could even prioritize Auto-Truck to run after hours when there is less traffic and potential complications.
The thing that really feels possible to me is long haul autonomous trucks only on the highway. They can transport themselves between depots and then an actual driver does the tricky in-city transit and delivery/pickup.
Not only is that most meaningful, it olso has the most bang for the buck (saves people the most time), AND is the easiest technically.
I wrote a long post about it before, but basically I expect self driving trucks on dedicated interstate lanes to be the start. Then self driving cars on the same lanes.
Over time all interstates will be self driving. City streets will never be unless we get AI with general intelligence.
Well, to control things, you'd have to have a highway that's only for self-driving vehicles. And then you'd need to get them there - with what, human drivers? (losing the cost savings) Maybe you could use this for self-driving trucks between freight depots.
The problem with this is - why not just use trains at this point? Trains already an economical solution for point to point transportation.
i believe (and someone correct me if wrong) that driving on the interstate (and self driving cars/trucks) is a somewhat [way] easier problem than driving on any road. you’re not going to get a lot of value from
what you’re proposing, but it’s going to be super expensive.
That would be fine with me. If I handled the local roads and the car drove only on the freeway that would solve like 80% of the problem.
And because such a thing would be a huge win for trucking companies I fully expect the US will eventually instrument the entire interstate system to make this happen. (i.e. there is enough money in it to make it happen.)
Fully autonomous local driving is not likely to happen till we have real AI that can understand things like: the guy down the street is unloading a construction vehicle, so make a U-turn and go down a different street.
Someone in the industry suggested to me that the number of long-haul truckers needed is relatively small. And that’s where autonomous trucks are going to be viable for quite a while. It’s one thing to autopilot a truck down a long straight freeway. It’s another to pilot a truck through city streets.
Everyone is wrong about long haul trucks, frankly. It will be easier to get fully autonomous cars than trucks. They're much longer and wider. They're at least twenty times heavier. They require much more room to maneuver, to start, and to stop. If they're involved in a crash, they cause a lot more damage.
Not to mention that there's nothing really predictable about a long route. Traffic, weather, construction, and every other variable is more likely to change over a longer route as well. It would be far better to focus on making autonomous cars first.
This would still be a big win for long haul trucking, most of time is spent staying in lane on the interstate. The drivers are required to take breaks to stay alert which adds time to the delivery unless alternating drivers.
IMO this is where self driving should focus, not city driving. Truck drivers or anyone gets the vehicle on the interstate and you can sleep or whatever to the next exit for fuel or your destination then take over again.
Two things I don't get in the current focus on self driving:
1. Urban navigation. Obviously the end game, but just exit to exit interstate navigation would be a much better near term goal and greatly benefit truck drivers along with anyone doing a road trip.
2. Unmanned. I would think it would be a long time before you would have unmanned trucks going down the highway. Seems much more obvious to have a driver / custodian in the truck for the foreseeable future until everyone is very comfortable with the reliability of the tech and its ability to cope with situations like you describe. Meanwhile for truck drivers to get around mandatory rest periods due to self driving assistance would be a huge win for the industry even if they are still manning the truck.
Highway autonomy will be a nice feature but you still need a competent human driver to be present for end to end transportation. So I still need to order a car with a driver to get to the airport.
I assume that you're referring to trucking. It's possible that trucking companies will set up depots right off the highway and will reduce drivers as a result. But a lot of long distance container transport is already done by trains so it's not immediately obvious that eliminating drivers for only the highway portion of trucking is necessarily a big enough win to make it happen. (Especially if autonomous driving systems allow for the driver to sleep in his cab while underway.)
I always felt like long-haul B2B deliveries (e.g., from warehouse to supermarket) was the most sensible starting point for actual use of self-driving vehicles on the roads. No worries about convincing customers to give up control, the extra equipment overhead is probably relatively small when you're already working with a massive truck, no stopping to sleep/eat, no tired drivers...
If we're going to beacon up a road, they easily make the most sense.
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