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"What about the roads themselves? I'm curious how an autonomous truck will handle a snow-covered highway, fog, potholes, and tight corners caused by narrow road

"What about the roads themselves? I'm curious how an autonomous truck will handle a snow-covered highway, fog, potholes, and tight corners caused by narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc." It won't; at least, it won't need to handle narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc. The autonomous truck need not drive the whole route that a human driver does now. Drive down the Ohio Turnpike and you will see numerous parking lots with UPS trailers parked in them, right alongside the highway. All you need is an autonomous truck to drive the trailer down the turnpike. Humans can drop it off at the turnpike and pick it up. It could deal with typical weather events, or just look at the weather forecast and stay parked if the weather looks like it will be bad. The highways are cleared shoulder to shoulder a day or two after most snows so the autonomous trucks wouldn't lose too much yearly time due to bad weather. You could keep humans around to drive the more urgent shipments.

madeofpalk 11y ago
Would it still be an advanced net if you had humans in the trucks as a 'backup', with the autonomous driving doing 90% of the 'boring' driving down the highways? Humans would still drive the last mile (ha!). Would that be significant safer and more efficient to make it worthwhile? If you limit autonomous driving to the main freight routes on the highway, I can see self driving vehicles happening a lot sooner than I previously expected. Like 20 years sooner.
- acveilleux 11y ago
  They started truck automation in mining and container terminals in ports. Areas with no other traffic and the possibility of active guidance (beacons along/embedded in the route and so on.) Highways are the next obvious use. I could see automated trucks driving down the transcanadian highway for example or similar long interstate stretch. I gotta say though, if we're going that way, why not go intermodal, add a RR right of way through the interstate with a double-track, operate automated freight trains and automated transshipment terminals. Just load the trailer onto the train and go. I know rail isn't sexy but it'd make sense in terms of carbon footprint (trains could be multimode diesel-electric/electric depending on corridor.) And most of that rail net could be fully automated.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Roads are really expensive. Adding rail lines is cheaper to build and operate so a dedicated automated truck lane seems like a poor idea. If anything building 100+ MPH rail for long trips like this seems like a great investment until you adjust for actual traffic levels.
    - praxulus 11y ago
      They don't need to build new roads, they just need to add cones to mark off a lane on an existing highway.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - usrusr 11y ago
    Rail suffers a lot from inflexibility and the massive redundancy required to survive the occasional track maintenance. Trailer-on-railroad does not really improve on that. A true logistics moonshot would have to go all the way to "roadgoing, powered railcars" that could platoon on that double-track and maybe opt into some form of power delivery (overhead line?) where available, switching on the fly between rubber/air and steel wheelsets as required. The beauty of this expensive approach is that it would not only obviate waiting for a train going in the right direction and the requirement for mode switching terminals (those are just the fair weather sailing benefits), but also eliminate the inherent fragility of highly interdependent railroad schedules. Where conventional rail quickly breaks down completely, road can gracefully degrade towards a massive traffic jam slowly grinding forward on some dirt road fallback route.
- levemi 11y ago
  > Would it still be an advanced net if you had humans in the trucks as a 'backup', with the autonomous driving doing 90% of the 'boring' driving down the highways? Humans would still drive the last mile (ha!). You're exhibiting the AI effect [0]. Could you program the software that makes vehicles drive around "boring" roads? Of course it's advanced. > I can see self driving vehicles happening a lot sooner than I previously expected. Like 20 years sooner. Self driving vehicles are already a thing. They're driving around the bay are all the time [1]. They'll be "happening" in the delivery market much sooner than 20 years, like in the next 5. The state of California has already started the regulatory process [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect#AI_is_whatever_hasn.27t_been_done_yet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect#AI_is_whatever_hasn.... [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=self+driving+vehicle+spotted https://www.google.com/search?q=self+driving+vehicle+spotted [2] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auto https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auto
  - madeofpalk 11y ago
    > You're exhibiting the AI effect At first I had no idea what you're referring to, but then I realised the confused stemmed from my typo. I meant to ask whether it was a significant advancement, not an advanced net/AI. I know self driving cars are a "thing" already, but only in very limited and constrained circumstances. Last time I checked, Google's can only drive on roads where they've meticulously already mapped out everything from the height of the curb to the exact location of the traffic lights. That's not to discount their work, but it's still in the very early stages of the self driving dream of having a car that can drive you anywhere while you watch a movie.
    - levemi 11y ago
      Self driving cars technology is AI. It is an advancement, a very significant one that will save many, many lives every day. Self driving cars are not in an early stage. Self driving technology is already worth in the billions. See the GM acquisition of Cruise. These cars have driven hundreds of thousands of miles on real roads that other people are also driving, probably including to a movie theater. You are discount the work and you're doing it from a place of complete ignorance.
- Cthulhu_ 11y ago
  I think that will be the near future; we've already done the exact same thing with airline pilots, who spend most of a flight on autopilot (hence the expression). This allows them to do long shifts with much lower mental pressure. I'm even imagining 24 hour drivers, who let the truck drive autonomously at night on quiet roads at low speeds while they sleep and live in the truck. A bit like lonely spaceship pilots from science fiction.
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    i think this is a likely first application. you can boost schedules and efficiency massively by simply allowing a truck to drive itself to the next waypoint overnight (maybe not even the whole night -- just to the next safe stopping area) when the driver would normally be sleeping. if there's an emergency, simply stop and pull over and alert the driver. this is probably also much easier to sell to existing industry and government. you're not eliminating drivers at all, but instead making their jobs easier and profits higher. having zero autonomous trucks on the road during the day is also a PR positive. no road tripping families put at risk, etc.
    - sqeaky 11y ago
      I can't wait for the day that putting 0 human drivers on the road is a PR positive, because no road tripping families are put at risk.
      - beachstartup 11y ago
        not going to happen in the US. you may not like it, but that has nothing to do with reality.
        marviel 11y ago
        Reasoning pls
- ben-en 11y ago
  There is a lot of intercity driving that could be rendered unnecessary with an automated intercity system. This may also make the shift easier on the current labor pool, as they could migrate to local delivery work.
- ars 11y ago
  > If you limit autonomous driving to the main freight routes on the highway, I can see self driving vehicles happening a lot sooner than I previously expected. Like 20 years sooner. It is 100% certain without any doubt whatsoever that this is how it will start. It will start with dedicated interstate roads (or lanes) just for driverless trucks, and then cars. After some time all freeways will be 100% driverless. I don't anticipate mixed use (driverless + drivers) ever happening. Local roads (i.e. uncontrolled access) is many many decades away.
  - uncoder0 11y ago
    Can you elaborate on why you don't see mixed use ever happening? Do you think its regulatory, liability or technological... or maybe some combination of the three?
    - ars 11y ago
      Because it will never be needed. The steps go like this: Driverless car in a dedicated lane. That will be first since it's much easier to build than local driving or mixed long distance. It also covers the most important need (i.e. much less economic reason to make one for local use). Lots more people see how great that is, so more cars (and trucks) will be rapidly added. That lane will reach capacity, so more lanes will be added. Within 5 to 10 years driverless long distance will be the norm, and long distance driver cars will be rare. (All the cars will be have mixed modes, with the driver taking over for local streets.) Every new car will advertise that it includes diverless mode as a feature. All this will happen so fast there won't be time to perfect a mixed use car. By the time they do perfect a local driverless car virtually all cars on the market will already have long-distance driverless mode. And the ones that don't will probably get retrofit kits. So at no point will mixed long distance ever be a thing - by the time the technology is able to do that, there won't be any cars that need it.
  - sqeaky 11y ago
    > I don't anticipate mixed use (driverless + drivers) ever happening. but it already has?! I mean there are already self driving cars being tested on public roads. Technically not driverless, but almost.
- 2close4comfort 11y ago
  Add the severe driver shortage that has been taking place in the tucking industry for about 7 years plus and it will happen even sooner.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  Well I find it always incredible that the point of self driving cars that is most needed is the hardest part and least likely to occur anytime soon, that is driving in bad to very bad conditions. though with the prevalence of texting while driving maybe cars will not necessarily need to always drive but simply take the needed emergency action
pietro 11y ago
> The autonomous truck need not drive the whole route that a human driver does now. Exactly. They'll be more like trains than trucks as we know them; they'll simply have more tracks available.
- bernardlunn 11y ago
  Makes sense. Do the hundreds of straight highway miles driverless, then transfer to human driver for tricky last bits. Dumb question - why not use trains?

madeofpalk 11y ago

Would it still be an advanced net if you had humans in the trucks as a 'backup', with the autonomous driving doing 90% of the 'boring' driving down the highways? Humans would still drive the last mile (ha!). Would that be significant safer and more efficient to make it worthwhile? If you limit autonomous driving to the main freight routes on the highway, I can see self driving vehicles happening a lot sooner than I previously expected. Like 20 years sooner.

acveilleux 11y ago
They started truck automation in mining and container terminals in ports. Areas with no other traffic and the possibility of active guidance (beacons along/embedded in the route and so on.) Highways are the next obvious use. I could see automated trucks driving down the transcanadian highway for example or similar long interstate stretch. I gotta say though, if we're going that way, why not go intermodal, add a RR right of way through the interstate with a double-track, operate automated freight trains and automated transshipment terminals. Just load the trailer onto the train and go. I know rail isn't sexy but it'd make sense in terms of carbon footprint (trains could be multimode diesel-electric/electric depending on corridor.) And most of that rail net could be fully automated.
- Retric 11y ago
  Roads are really expensive. Adding rail lines is cheaper to build and operate so a dedicated automated truck lane seems like a poor idea. If anything building 100+ MPH rail for long trips like this seems like a great investment until you adjust for actual traffic levels.
  - praxulus 11y ago
    They don't need to build new roads, they just need to add cones to mark off a lane on an existing highway.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- usrusr 11y ago
  Rail suffers a lot from inflexibility and the massive redundancy required to survive the occasional track maintenance. Trailer-on-railroad does not really improve on that. A true logistics moonshot would have to go all the way to "roadgoing, powered railcars" that could platoon on that double-track and maybe opt into some form of power delivery (overhead line?) where available, switching on the fly between rubber/air and steel wheelsets as required. The beauty of this expensive approach is that it would not only obviate waiting for a train going in the right direction and the requirement for mode switching terminals (those are just the fair weather sailing benefits), but also eliminate the inherent fragility of highly interdependent railroad schedules. Where conventional rail quickly breaks down completely, road can gracefully degrade towards a massive traffic jam slowly grinding forward on some dirt road fallback route.
levemi 11y ago
> Would it still be an advanced net if you had humans in the trucks as a 'backup', with the autonomous driving doing 90% of the 'boring' driving down the highways? Humans would still drive the last mile (ha!). You're exhibiting the AI effect [0]. Could you program the software that makes vehicles drive around "boring" roads? Of course it's advanced. > I can see self driving vehicles happening a lot sooner than I previously expected. Like 20 years sooner. Self driving vehicles are already a thing. They're driving around the bay are all the time [1]. They'll be "happening" in the delivery market much sooner than 20 years, like in the next 5. The state of California has already started the regulatory process [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect#AI_is_whatever_hasn.27t_been_done_yet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect#AI_is_whatever_hasn.... [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=self+driving+vehicle+spotted https://www.google.com/search?q=self+driving+vehicle+spotted [2] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auto https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auto
- madeofpalk 11y ago
  > You're exhibiting the AI effect At first I had no idea what you're referring to, but then I realised the confused stemmed from my typo. I meant to ask whether it was a significant advancement, not an advanced net/AI. I know self driving cars are a "thing" already, but only in very limited and constrained circumstances. Last time I checked, Google's can only drive on roads where they've meticulously already mapped out everything from the height of the curb to the exact location of the traffic lights. That's not to discount their work, but it's still in the very early stages of the self driving dream of having a car that can drive you anywhere while you watch a movie.
  - levemi 11y ago
    Self driving cars technology is AI. It is an advancement, a very significant one that will save many, many lives every day. Self driving cars are not in an early stage. Self driving technology is already worth in the billions. See the GM acquisition of Cruise. These cars have driven hundreds of thousands of miles on real roads that other people are also driving, probably including to a movie theater. You are discount the work and you're doing it from a place of complete ignorance.
Cthulhu_ 11y ago
I think that will be the near future; we've already done the exact same thing with airline pilots, who spend most of a flight on autopilot (hence the expression). This allows them to do long shifts with much lower mental pressure. I'm even imagining 24 hour drivers, who let the truck drive autonomously at night on quiet roads at low speeds while they sleep and live in the truck. A bit like lonely spaceship pilots from science fiction.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  i think this is a likely first application. you can boost schedules and efficiency massively by simply allowing a truck to drive itself to the next waypoint overnight (maybe not even the whole night -- just to the next safe stopping area) when the driver would normally be sleeping. if there's an emergency, simply stop and pull over and alert the driver. this is probably also much easier to sell to existing industry and government. you're not eliminating drivers at all, but instead making their jobs easier and profits higher. having zero autonomous trucks on the road during the day is also a PR positive. no road tripping families put at risk, etc.
  - sqeaky 11y ago
    I can't wait for the day that putting 0 human drivers on the road is a PR positive, because no road tripping families are put at risk.
    - beachstartup 11y ago
      not going to happen in the US. you may not like it, but that has nothing to do with reality.
      - marviel 11y ago
        Reasoning pls
ben-en 11y ago
There is a lot of intercity driving that could be rendered unnecessary with an automated intercity system. This may also make the shift easier on the current labor pool, as they could migrate to local delivery work.
ars 11y ago
> If you limit autonomous driving to the main freight routes on the highway, I can see self driving vehicles happening a lot sooner than I previously expected. Like 20 years sooner. It is 100% certain without any doubt whatsoever that this is how it will start. It will start with dedicated interstate roads (or lanes) just for driverless trucks, and then cars. After some time all freeways will be 100% driverless. I don't anticipate mixed use (driverless + drivers) ever happening. Local roads (i.e. uncontrolled access) is many many decades away.
- uncoder0 11y ago
  Can you elaborate on why you don't see mixed use ever happening? Do you think its regulatory, liability or technological... or maybe some combination of the three?
  - ars 11y ago
    Because it will never be needed. The steps go like this: Driverless car in a dedicated lane. That will be first since it's much easier to build than local driving or mixed long distance. It also covers the most important need (i.e. much less economic reason to make one for local use). Lots more people see how great that is, so more cars (and trucks) will be rapidly added. That lane will reach capacity, so more lanes will be added. Within 5 to 10 years driverless long distance will be the norm, and long distance driver cars will be rare. (All the cars will be have mixed modes, with the driver taking over for local streets.) Every new car will advertise that it includes diverless mode as a feature. All this will happen so fast there won't be time to perfect a mixed use car. By the time they do perfect a local driverless car virtually all cars on the market will already have long-distance driverless mode. And the ones that don't will probably get retrofit kits. So at no point will mixed long distance ever be a thing - by the time the technology is able to do that, there won't be any cars that need it.
- sqeaky 11y ago
  > I don't anticipate mixed use (driverless + drivers) ever happening. but it already has?! I mean there are already self driving cars being tested on public roads. Technically not driverless, but almost.
2close4comfort 11y ago
Add the severe driver shortage that has been taking place in the tucking industry for about 7 years plus and it will happen even sooner.
Shivetya 11y ago
Well I find it always incredible that the point of self driving cars that is most needed is the hardest part and least likely to occur anytime soon, that is driving in bad to very bad conditions. though with the prevalence of texting while driving maybe cars will not necessarily need to always drive but simply take the needed emergency action

pietro 11y ago

> The autonomous truck need not drive the whole route that a human driver does now. Exactly. They'll be more like trains than trucks as we know them; they'll simply have more tracks available.

bernardlunn 11y ago
Makes sense. Do the hundreds of straight highway miles driverless, then transfer to human driver for tricky last bits. Dumb question - why not use trains?