9 ms·

Driverless buses hit the streets of Sion

106 points by jacinda 10y ago

godzillabrennus 10y ago
The tech is neat and I'm sure this is just the beginning of these kinds of driverless vehicles. Dubai even has driverless cars on the road. What's really scary is that all signs point to the end of the blue collar workforce being near. Drones to do construction, to operate the trains, planes and automobiles, so that us and our cargo get where they need to go. What's the plan for replacing work after this new era arrives? Futurists popularized that we would have robot servants for generations and it's becoming true. They didn't popularize the notion that 1% of the population would own all the robots.
- kome 10y ago
  > What's the plan for replacing work after this new era arrives? Communism.
  - narrowrail 10y ago
    Was Star Trek TNG an example of futuristic communism? It seems all real world attempts at communism were simultaneously founded as dictatorships, and Picard didn't seem like a dictator. I guess the post-scarcity world is a bit difficult to imagine.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      Star Trek TNG was social democracy with a basic income. No one had to work, but people could still get a benefit from doing so, and could own things. One theory how all this fits together: https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29bab88d50 https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29ba...
    - johnchristopher 10y ago
      The federation was a peaceful powerhouse but it was the most aggressive economic force around. https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29bab88d50#.8cnxp0g7z https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29ba... (keep in mind we are in the fan realm, nonetheless a nice read if you are into ST)
    - david-given 10y ago
      ...there's a fan theory that Star Trek and Blake's 7 are both depictions of the same universe, portraying the same Federation; it's just that Star Trek is pro-government propaganda, while Blake's 7 is resistance propaganda (on a much lower budget). Neither one, of course, tells the whole story...
    - krapp 10y ago
      Star Trek's form of government (TNG and after) was an example of "capitalism bad something something magical post-scarcity fairy juice." Fans have since put much, much more effort into theorizing about its actual nature than the writers ever did.
    - dbcooper 10y ago
      The Volokh Conspiracy post, "How Federal is Star Trek's Federation?", is probably the best thing I've read on Trek's political economy. It describes something rather more authoritarian ... http://www.volokh.com/posts/1190182117.shtml http://www.volokh.com/posts/1190182117.shtml
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    It will be much worse than that.
    - KON_Air 10y ago
      This winter comrade, we will wish it hard enough and corporate states will be communists!
- mgbmtl 10y ago
  I'm sure lots of people would appreciate not having to work 3 jobs up to 60h/week. Scaling back to max 30-35 hours like in more progressive countries sounds interesting. c.f. Michael Moore's "where to invade next" (I usually don't like his style, but I liked that movie) A few countries are in talks about converting most types of social benefits into a flat garanteed minimum revenue (which is then taxed). Countries considering this include Canada and a few EU countries (Switzerland are probably the most advanced in this discussion). Instead of racing to the bottom, competing for bad jobs, we should level the playing field and give people more options in order to adapt to this new economy. Although I guess it's obvious by now that I'm Canadian :)
  - engad 10y ago
    > Switzerland are probably the most advanced in this discussion Didn't Brazil already have it for more then a decade? And Iran, Macao.
- thibaut_barrere 10y ago
  I do believe it will affect white collar work just as much.
  - feklar 10y ago
    Doctors and developers I imagine will be the next to go after the bus and taxi drivers, each hospital will have just a few doctors overseeing machines and we will all program ourselves out of work building interpreters anybody can give voice commands to build custom software.
    - samsonradu 10y ago
      In a software controlled world I tend to believe the developers will go last won't they? Also QA to the end!
      - dllthomas 10y ago
        > In a software controlled world I tend to believe the developers will go last won't they? A "software controlled world" seems to imply a constant need for development, but it will only need developers for as long as software can't do the necessary development itself. I can come up with reasons why this might be unlikely, but I don't see any of them following from whether the world is "software controlled".
        samsonradu 10y ago
        Isn't there a constant need for development after all? Look at how fast the world is changing throughout time, new features and requirements are needed. Software doing the all necessary development and also adjusting itself to keep up with time without human involvement implies an AI similar to the ones in Terminator 2 movie and the world didn't look very good there :)
        dllthomas 10y ago
        My point was not that there is no reason to believe developers will continue to be necessary, just that they do not seem to flow from "a software controlled world." Regarding Terminator 2, I enjoyed the movie but be careful about treating fiction as evidence.
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  You're just a Luddite.
- raus22 10y ago
  Related video: Humans need not apply https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU
- krapp 10y ago
  > What's the plan for replacing work after this new era arrives? There is no plan, beyond the rich getting richer.
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  > What's the plan for replacing work after this new era arrives? Who cares? Anybody sees a problem with automating away so many jobs that unemployment rises to 50% and beyond? Unemployment is not a problem. It's how we deal with it that is. You just can't expect everyone to work when machines do all the work. So… how about we all work less? What about a 4 days work-week, or even 3? How about automating so much work that voluntary community service becomes enough? We need to think about it soon, because the current model is not pretty: just let the jobless starve, and lock them up (or out) when they start to demand jobs or (gasp!) money. And if things get ugly, send the army bots. "Shoot on sight" is pretty easy to automate, if you don't care to discriminate. > hey didn't popularize the notion that 1% of the population would own all the robots. The heart of the problem, really. To this, I see only one solution: abolishing lucrative property, communist scare crow be dammed.
  - mgrpowers 10y ago
    When I ask my peers (mid-twenties) about the concept of basic income they freak out at the concept of people not working. Unfortunately it's going to take a few more generations to understand we need to rethink the next steps of someone entering adulthood.
    - snuxoll 10y ago
      It doesn't help that capitalism is so ingrained in our culture. Go to good school, get a worthwhile degree to make yourself a valuable commodity (don't ever pretend you aren't a commodity, that's all labor is) and if you're lucky you will live a good life. The thought of not having to WORK, to be BETTER than the competition just doesn't make sense to a lot of people. While I just made a comment on reddit not more than an hour ago that humans are a naturally cooperative species, ultimately our base instincts are still to compete for resources to rise above our peers (even if we may help our own in the process). It's going to take a lot of social training to make people comfortable with the fact that we are rapidly approaching a post-scarcity world where the traditional model of growth-fueled capitalism falls apart (and it will happen, Earth can only sustain so many humans at a time).
trgn 10y ago
I love this approach. It would be great to have 100s of these on more or less predefined trajectories, but without a set schedule. Just press a button and one shows up a few minutes later, perhaps with already some passengers going similar routes. It could help anchor urban development, something a pure self driving car would not too, and the absence of a set schedule removes the biggest drawback of public transportation. They can also just use existing roads, no need to construct a separate track. I hope these things would help introduce affordable public transportation in many US cities, and actually be useful and practical.
- kuschku 10y ago
  > the absence of a set schedule removes the biggest drawback of public transportation I’d argue that having no schedule is even worse. With a set schedule, I can just go to the stop, wait a minute, and a bus will come – most lines are running every 5 or 10 minutes anyway (or 15 to 20min in the suburbs). With this, the situation would get a lot worse, I’d have higher waiting times, less of a guarantee that one would come (what if there’s not enough demand?), etc.
  - erik 10y ago
    Bus coverage in my city is nowhere near this good. High frequency routes are every 15min. Most are 30min, and some routes only run every hour. On demand with some delay would be a huge improvement.
  - jfoutz 10y ago
    With an uber like indicator of wait time, it seems like it would be tolerable. If a bus is guaranteed to show up in 20 minutes, i can make use of those 20 minutes. Fundamentally though, it's a density/diffusion problem. Having enough rides available in the right spots is tough. Especially when, say 10% of riders go way off in the sticks, with no need for pickups out there. You want a nice random distribution of rider routes, but really, people go east in the morning, and west in the evening (for example), so a lot of capacity is unused just getting back to where demand is. tricky tricky problem. schedules and defined routes are part of the solution, for sure.
fiatjaf 10y ago
Unionized drivers, suffer!
icefo 10y ago
Never thought that I would learn something about my small school town on HN ! It's true that you can go almost everywhere on foot in a reasonable amount of time but some interesting places (for example pond where you can do BBC and drink) are remote and walking one hour just to get there sucks. Ordering a bus to get you and your friends there would be perfect
Animats 10y ago
There have been a few systems like this at airports, but this may be the first one on public streets.
- jimktrains2 10y ago
  On a separated, fixed guideway it's not too difficult to have an autonomous systems. Airports, metros, and even "personal people movers" like in Morgantown all work without a driver on board. As you said, moving to the chaos that is a street is a different story.
  - Animats 10y ago
    There are getting to be many little systems of slow autonomous short buses.[1] These will probably be all over campuses big enough to have shuttle buses soon. This may be the first way autonomous driving is deployed. Little buses go to destinations nearby, or take you to a station for larger and faster transit. Most trips would be very short, 1 km or so. The big advantage of driverless is that many little buses don't cost more per seat than a few big ones. A city bus costs $300K to $500K for a 50-seat bus. If somebody can build an 8 passenger autonomous bus for $75K, that's a win all by itself. [1] http://gizmodo.com/the-uss-first-autonomous-buses-will-drive-around-a-cali-1734989938 http://gizmodo.com/the-uss-first-autonomous-buses-will-drive...
Futurebot 10y ago
Singapore is another country testing driverless buses/pods and trucks: http://www.reuters.com/article/singapore-transport-driverless-idUSL3N1280S920151012 http://www.reuters.com/article/singapore-transport-driverles...
elorant 10y ago
We have one of those in Greece too. http://www.ekathimerini.com/201509/article/ekathimerini/community/driverless-bus-on-the-way-in-trikala http://www.ekathimerini.com/201509/article/ekathimerini/comm...
ratsimihah 10y ago
People like Charlie Miller must be delighted.
kristopolous 10y ago
This is 6 months old... Anyone know what the track record of the bus has been in that time?
- jacalata 10y ago
  I can't find any more recent news, or mentions on the Sion public transport site, so my guess is they are still in testing and their planned rollout in "spring 2016" has been delayed.
darawk 10y ago
This strikes me as an interesting approach that could maybe be generalized by a company like Uber. We know some of the biggest problems with self-driving cars are: - Needing extremely precise, up to date maps - Inclement weather / conditions Which suggests to me that if you chose a particular city, mapped it out extensively, and then only allowed these cars on the road during good weather conditions...you could deploy these things much, much more rapidly And of course since consumers wouldn't buy a car that they can't use much of the time or take outside the city limits, the natural use-case of this is as an on-demand taxi service, like Uber or Lyft.

106 points by jacinda 10y ago

The tech is neat and I'm sure this is just the beginning of these kinds of driverless vehicles. Dubai even has driverless cars on the road. What's really scary is that all signs point to the end of the blue collar workforce being near. Drones to do construction, to operate the trains, planes and automobiles, so that us and our cargo get where they need to go. What's the plan for replacing work after this new era arrives? Futurists popularized that we would have robot servants for generations and it's becoming true. They didn't popularize the notion that 1% of the population would own all the robots.

kome 10y ago
> What's the plan for replacing work after this new era arrives? Communism.
- narrowrail 10y ago
  Was Star Trek TNG an example of futuristic communism? It seems all real world attempts at communism were simultaneously founded as dictatorships, and Picard didn't seem like a dictator. I guess the post-scarcity world is a bit difficult to imagine.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    Star Trek TNG was social democracy with a basic income. No one had to work, but people could still get a benefit from doing so, and could own things. One theory how all this fits together: https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29bab88d50 https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29ba...
  - johnchristopher 10y ago
    The federation was a peaceful powerhouse but it was the most aggressive economic force around. https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29bab88d50#.8cnxp0g7z https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29ba... (keep in mind we are in the fan realm, nonetheless a nice read if you are into ST)
  - david-given 10y ago
    ...there's a fan theory that Star Trek and Blake's 7 are both depictions of the same universe, portraying the same Federation; it's just that Star Trek is pro-government propaganda, while Blake's 7 is resistance propaganda (on a much lower budget). Neither one, of course, tells the whole story...
  - krapp 10y ago
    Star Trek's form of government (TNG and after) was an example of "capitalism bad something something magical post-scarcity fairy juice." Fans have since put much, much more effort into theorizing about its actual nature than the writers ever did.
  - dbcooper 10y ago
    The Volokh Conspiracy post, "How Federal is Star Trek's Federation?", is probably the best thing I've read on Trek's political economy. It describes something rather more authoritarian ... http://www.volokh.com/posts/1190182117.shtml http://www.volokh.com/posts/1190182117.shtml
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  It will be much worse than that.
  - KON_Air 10y ago
    This winter comrade, we will wish it hard enough and corporate states will be communists!
mgbmtl 10y ago
I'm sure lots of people would appreciate not having to work 3 jobs up to 60h/week. Scaling back to max 30-35 hours like in more progressive countries sounds interesting. c.f. Michael Moore's "where to invade next" (I usually don't like his style, but I liked that movie) A few countries are in talks about converting most types of social benefits into a flat garanteed minimum revenue (which is then taxed). Countries considering this include Canada and a few EU countries (Switzerland are probably the most advanced in this discussion). Instead of racing to the bottom, competing for bad jobs, we should level the playing field and give people more options in order to adapt to this new economy. Although I guess it's obvious by now that I'm Canadian :)
- engad 10y ago
  > Switzerland are probably the most advanced in this discussion Didn't Brazil already have it for more then a decade? And Iran, Macao.
thibaut_barrere 10y ago
I do believe it will affect white collar work just as much.
- feklar 10y ago
  Doctors and developers I imagine will be the next to go after the bus and taxi drivers, each hospital will have just a few doctors overseeing machines and we will all program ourselves out of work building interpreters anybody can give voice commands to build custom software.
  - samsonradu 10y ago
    In a software controlled world I tend to believe the developers will go last won't they? Also QA to the end!
    - dllthomas 10y ago
      > In a software controlled world I tend to believe the developers will go last won't they? A "software controlled world" seems to imply a constant need for development, but it will only need developers for as long as software can't do the necessary development itself. I can come up with reasons why this might be unlikely, but I don't see any of them following from whether the world is "software controlled".
      - samsonradu 10y ago
        Isn't there a constant need for development after all? Look at how fast the world is changing throughout time, new features and requirements are needed. Software doing the all necessary development and also adjusting itself to keep up with time without human involvement implies an AI similar to the ones in Terminator 2 movie and the world didn't look very good there :)
        dllthomas 10y ago
        My point was not that there is no reason to believe developers will continue to be necessary, just that they do not seem to flow from "a software controlled world." Regarding Terminator 2, I enjoyed the movie but be careful about treating fiction as evidence.
fiatjaf 10y ago
You're just a Luddite.
raus22 10y ago
Related video: Humans need not apply https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU
krapp 10y ago
> What's the plan for replacing work after this new era arrives? There is no plan, beyond the rich getting richer.
loup-vaillant 10y ago
> What's the plan for replacing work after this new era arrives? Who cares? Anybody sees a problem with automating away so many jobs that unemployment rises to 50% and beyond? Unemployment is not a problem. It's how we deal with it that is. You just can't expect everyone to work when machines do all the work. So… how about we all work less? What about a 4 days work-week, or even 3? How about automating so much work that voluntary community service becomes enough? We need to think about it soon, because the current model is not pretty: just let the jobless starve, and lock them up (or out) when they start to demand jobs or (gasp!) money. And if things get ugly, send the army bots. "Shoot on sight" is pretty easy to automate, if you don't care to discriminate. > hey didn't popularize the notion that 1% of the population would own all the robots. The heart of the problem, really. To this, I see only one solution: abolishing lucrative property, communist scare crow be dammed.
- mgrpowers 10y ago
  When I ask my peers (mid-twenties) about the concept of basic income they freak out at the concept of people not working. Unfortunately it's going to take a few more generations to understand we need to rethink the next steps of someone entering adulthood.
  - snuxoll 10y ago
    It doesn't help that capitalism is so ingrained in our culture. Go to good school, get a worthwhile degree to make yourself a valuable commodity (don't ever pretend you aren't a commodity, that's all labor is) and if you're lucky you will live a good life. The thought of not having to WORK, to be BETTER than the competition just doesn't make sense to a lot of people. While I just made a comment on reddit not more than an hour ago that humans are a naturally cooperative species, ultimately our base instincts are still to compete for resources to rise above our peers (even if we may help our own in the process). It's going to take a lot of social training to make people comfortable with the fact that we are rapidly approaching a post-scarcity world where the traditional model of growth-fueled capitalism falls apart (and it will happen, Earth can only sustain so many humans at a time).

trgn 10y ago

I love this approach. It would be great to have 100s of these on more or less predefined trajectories, but without a set schedule. Just press a button and one shows up a few minutes later, perhaps with already some passengers going similar routes. It could help anchor urban development, something a pure self driving car would not too, and the absence of a set schedule removes the biggest drawback of public transportation. They can also just use existing roads, no need to construct a separate track. I hope these things would help introduce affordable public transportation in many US cities, and actually be useful and practical.

kuschku 10y ago
> the absence of a set schedule removes the biggest drawback of public transportation I’d argue that having no schedule is even worse. With a set schedule, I can just go to the stop, wait a minute, and a bus will come – most lines are running every 5 or 10 minutes anyway (or 15 to 20min in the suburbs). With this, the situation would get a lot worse, I’d have higher waiting times, less of a guarantee that one would come (what if there’s not enough demand?), etc.
- erik 10y ago
  Bus coverage in my city is nowhere near this good. High frequency routes are every 15min. Most are 30min, and some routes only run every hour. On demand with some delay would be a huge improvement.
- jfoutz 10y ago
  With an uber like indicator of wait time, it seems like it would be tolerable. If a bus is guaranteed to show up in 20 minutes, i can make use of those 20 minutes. Fundamentally though, it's a density/diffusion problem. Having enough rides available in the right spots is tough. Especially when, say 10% of riders go way off in the sticks, with no need for pickups out there. You want a nice random distribution of rider routes, but really, people go east in the morning, and west in the evening (for example), so a lot of capacity is unused just getting back to where demand is. tricky tricky problem. schedules and defined routes are part of the solution, for sure.

fiatjaf 10y ago

Unionized drivers, suffer!

icefo 10y ago

Never thought that I would learn something about my small school town on HN ! It's true that you can go almost everywhere on foot in a reasonable amount of time but some interesting places (for example pond where you can do BBC and drink) are remote and walking one hour just to get there sucks. Ordering a bus to get you and your friends there would be perfect

Animats 10y ago

There have been a few systems like this at airports, but this may be the first one on public streets.

jimktrains2 10y ago
On a separated, fixed guideway it's not too difficult to have an autonomous systems. Airports, metros, and even "personal people movers" like in Morgantown all work without a driver on board. As you said, moving to the chaos that is a street is a different story.
- Animats 10y ago
  There are getting to be many little systems of slow autonomous short buses.[1] These will probably be all over campuses big enough to have shuttle buses soon. This may be the first way autonomous driving is deployed. Little buses go to destinations nearby, or take you to a station for larger and faster transit. Most trips would be very short, 1 km or so. The big advantage of driverless is that many little buses don't cost more per seat than a few big ones. A city bus costs $300K to $500K for a 50-seat bus. If somebody can build an 8 passenger autonomous bus for $75K, that's a win all by itself. [1] http://gizmodo.com/the-uss-first-autonomous-buses-will-drive-around-a-cali-1734989938 http://gizmodo.com/the-uss-first-autonomous-buses-will-drive...

Futurebot 10y ago

Singapore is another country testing driverless buses/pods and trucks: http://www.reuters.com/article/singapore-transport-driverless-idUSL3N1280S920151012 http://www.reuters.com/article/singapore-transport-driverles...

elorant 10y ago

We have one of those in Greece too. http://www.ekathimerini.com/201509/article/ekathimerini/community/driverless-bus-on-the-way-in-trikala http://www.ekathimerini.com/201509/article/ekathimerini/comm...

ratsimihah 10y ago

People like Charlie Miller must be delighted.

kristopolous 10y ago

This is 6 months old... Anyone know what the track record of the bus has been in that time?

jacalata 10y ago
I can't find any more recent news, or mentions on the Sion public transport site, so my guess is they are still in testing and their planned rollout in "spring 2016" has been delayed.

darawk 10y ago

This strikes me as an interesting approach that could maybe be generalized by a company like Uber. We know some of the biggest problems with self-driving cars are: - Needing extremely precise, up to date maps - Inclement weather / conditions Which suggests to me that if you chose a particular city, mapped it out extensively, and then only allowed these cars on the road during good weather conditions...you could deploy these things much, much more rapidly And of course since consumers wouldn't buy a car that they can't use much of the time or take outside the city limits, the natural use-case of this is as an on-demand taxi service, like Uber or Lyft.