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You really think so? Sure, in an urban environment cameras and alarms might work. But good luck protecting a truck on an open highway miles away from the neare
by J-dawg 10y ago
You really think so? Sure, in an urban environment cameras and alarms might work.
But good luck protecting a truck on an open highway miles away from the nearest town.
HN conversations about autonomous vehicles are normally focussed on the technical hurdles of getting a car to drive and navigate autonomously. Maybe I'm cynical, but I think dealing with the actions of humans outside the vehicle will be a challenge of at least equal size.
- lettergram 10y agoI believe I've heard Mark Cuban say something similar, the technical challenges are easy, the business is the hard part. I totally agree. I can build the best image filtering app, but would never beat Instagram without a TON of marketing finesse
- intrasight 10y agoI'd say the problem is even worse in an urban environment. Nobody, including police, will pay any attention to those alarms. Autonomous trucks will end up having armed androids.
- jcoffland 10y agoYou don't need an android to operate a gun turret.
- Reason077 10y agoThe likely model initially is for trucks to run autonomously on highways for the long-haul part of the route, then have a human driver take over for the "last mile" of a delivery to an urban area. The reason isn't so much security but rather that autonomous urban driving is a more difficult problem to solve. The idea of roaming gangs holding up autonomous trucks might make a good plot for a sci-fi movie, but in the real world it probably isn't as big a problem as we imagine. Most of these things are going to contain pretty mundane shipments. If you're shipping currency or gold bullion or iPhones then sure, maybe more security would be appropriate.