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Autonomous Shipping Containers – Self-Driving Cars – Medium

13 points by edward 10y ago

visarga 10y ago
Maybe autonomous containers could also be capable of transferring cargo to smaller autonomous delivery cars, then we'd have a full routing delivery network, that could deliver any package from a point of source to a point of destination for a low fee. Next, we'd make automated factories that load materials and unload products by robot into the autonomous delivery containers. By organizing the factories as APIs, we could compile a complex product from a series of processes executed by various factories. It all works out because of the standard containerization and routing. To make an analogy to the computer - the transport network is the bus, the storage warehouses are the memory, and industrial robotics are the CPU. We've been manually compiling in assembler our products so far, but we could use higher order languages to define physical products and to share code between products. This would make it possible to attempt bootstrapping - a self reproducing (distributed) automated factory. If it works on renewable energy and common materials that are found in abundance in nature, it could mean a reduction in costs of production to zero.
- cstross 10y ago
  > Maybe autonomous containers could also be capable of transferring cargo to smaller autonomous delivery cars, then we'd have a full routing delivery network, that could deliver any package from a point of source to a point of destination for a low fee. If it's fully automated them it'll need security baked-in by design. And I mean security. Because someone will start thinking in terms of bombs in boxes with detonators controlled by something like an RPi with a GPS receiver. An inadequately secured automatic cargo delivery network is an amazing terrorist enabler (just as long as your hypothetical terrorists include a couple of tame hackers in their number). Right now, Amazon will let me send anyone (you included, if I have your address) a box of live worms, or crickets or even cockroaches. Some gag, if they're labelled as a gift and you open the box unwarily.) But it has to be something they've already accepted as stock in their fulfilment centers. A fulfilment system with no restrictions ... brr! (I'm not making it up about the roaches: https://www.amazon.com/Dubia-Roaches-Feeding-Reptiles-Medium/dp/B00I15GKT6/ https://www.amazon.com/Dubia-Roaches-Feeding-Reptiles-Medium... )
Animats 10y ago
Already happening at the more advanced ports.[1] Flat AGVs move containers around. No drivers. No crane operators. No people at all in the container area. Trucks of the future may be more like those AGVs than today's trucks - flat wheeled platforms with no cab. Fully computer-controlled traffic looks quite different from human-driven traffic. The coordination is much better. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo
- Already__Taken 10y ago
  Once everything coordinates like that it seems like they could just forget trying to organize the lanes and make the computer route everything.
cstross 10y ago
What the OP missed: highways with traffic jams caused by breakdowns somewhere in miles-long platoons of self-driving shipping containers that block entry/exit lanes (because there's no such thing as a perfect drive train, and cost competition will ensure that the cheapest prevail over the best, and of course they'll use drafting and drive nose-to-tail to reduce energy costs, because the failure mode is "only" a breakdown, and the inconvenience and cost is someone else's problem).
xbmcuser 10y ago
The op doesn't understand how containers are really used. There is a reason they are called "shipping" containers most containers spend more time on ships then on the road so making autonomous containers would waste a lot of resources for little gain.

13 points by edward 10y ago

Maybe autonomous containers could also be capable of transferring cargo to smaller autonomous delivery cars, then we'd have a full routing delivery network, that could deliver any package from a point of source to a point of destination for a low fee. Next, we'd make automated factories that load materials and unload products by robot into the autonomous delivery containers. By organizing the factories as APIs, we could compile a complex product from a series of processes executed by various factories. It all works out because of the standard containerization and routing. To make an analogy to the computer - the transport network is the bus, the storage warehouses are the memory, and industrial robotics are the CPU. We've been manually compiling in assembler our products so far, but we could use higher order languages to define physical products and to share code between products. This would make it possible to attempt bootstrapping - a self reproducing (distributed) automated factory. If it works on renewable energy and common materials that are found in abundance in nature, it could mean a reduction in costs of production to zero.

cstross 10y ago
> Maybe autonomous containers could also be capable of transferring cargo to smaller autonomous delivery cars, then we'd have a full routing delivery network, that could deliver any package from a point of source to a point of destination for a low fee. If it's fully automated them it'll need security baked-in by design. And I mean security. Because someone will start thinking in terms of bombs in boxes with detonators controlled by something like an RPi with a GPS receiver. An inadequately secured automatic cargo delivery network is an amazing terrorist enabler (just as long as your hypothetical terrorists include a couple of tame hackers in their number). Right now, Amazon will let me send anyone (you included, if I have your address) a box of live worms, or crickets or even cockroaches. Some gag, if they're labelled as a gift and you open the box unwarily.) But it has to be something they've already accepted as stock in their fulfilment centers. A fulfilment system with no restrictions ... brr! (I'm not making it up about the roaches: https://www.amazon.com/Dubia-Roaches-Feeding-Reptiles-Medium/dp/B00I15GKT6/ https://www.amazon.com/Dubia-Roaches-Feeding-Reptiles-Medium... )

Animats 10y ago

Already happening at the more advanced ports.[1] Flat AGVs move containers around. No drivers. No crane operators. No people at all in the container area. Trucks of the future may be more like those AGVs than today's trucks - flat wheeled platforms with no cab. Fully computer-controlled traffic looks quite different from human-driven traffic. The coordination is much better. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo

Already__Taken 10y ago
Once everything coordinates like that it seems like they could just forget trying to organize the lanes and make the computer route everything.

cstross 10y ago

What the OP missed: highways with traffic jams caused by breakdowns somewhere in miles-long platoons of self-driving shipping containers that block entry/exit lanes (because there's no such thing as a perfect drive train, and cost competition will ensure that the cheapest prevail over the best, and of course they'll use drafting and drive nose-to-tail to reduce energy costs, because the failure mode is "only" a breakdown, and the inconvenience and cost is someone else's problem).

xbmcuser 10y ago

The op doesn't understand how containers are really used. There is a reason they are called "shipping" containers most containers spend more time on ships then on the road so making autonomous containers would waste a lot of resources for little gain.