6 ms·

Funny that self-driving cars will become widespread years before self-driving trains will. Trains don't have steering wheels, can't swerve to miss pedestrians,

Funny that self-driving cars will become widespread years before self-driving trains will. Trains don't have steering wheels, can't swerve to miss pedestrians, don't have to obey roadside traffic officers' directions, don't have to see road markings... All they need to do is look at bright signals in a small set of known locations. Meanwhile the rail industry wants to delay, spend hundreds of millions of dollars to move to state-of-the-art new signalling systems. Fine, sure, do that, but in the meantime you can save a truckload of cash (and improve safety, and reduce lateness) by replacing each driver with an iPhone and a suction cup.

ep103 10y ago
I dunno, maybe? What would the security for that look like? If I found out trains had no drivers, and you could bring them to a stop just by disconnecting the iphone?
- repsilat 10y ago
  The "iPhone and suction cup" was tongue in cheek, but train drivers are already behind locked doors And anyone can already bring most trains to a stop by pulling the red "please stop this train" lever. Just install more cameras if you're worried, or get a security guard. Cheaper than a driver and takes less time to train (heh).
GordonS 10y ago
In the UK at least, there is a lot of resistance to automation from the unions. They are well organised, and able to essentially hold the rail companies to randsom until they back down on automation plans.
- repsilat 10y ago
  First thing to do is sell it as driver-assistance technology. More drivers move to the "just open and close the doors" role (aka the "man and a dog" factory of the future model.) Then you can let drivers just not be replaced when they retire. If the drivers union kicks up a fuss and they strike, well, great -- ask them to take the next day off too.
blensor 10y ago
There is work on self driving trains. In our university we worked on a project called autoBahn which made a proof of concept self driving train and I know of a few other research projects that worked in the same direction. However, in my opinion there are several aspects why this is developing much slower than self driving cars: * There are incredibly many regulations for every single piece of hardware that can be used on a train. They have such strict regulations that computing hardware that is certified for use on trains is usually 2 generations behind current hardware. * There are not that many test tracks and you can't just roll your own track without fronting huge sums to build a test track. A self driving car can at least be driven on a private land if you don't have access to a test track and in the minimal case it does not have much more requirements than basically a paved parking area. * If you want to do the testing on a real track (we were lucky and had a partner company that enabled us to use a public track) you have to slot into the regular transit schedule. Which means a lot of planning to do a single test and then a very tight schedule to get the test system up and running. If you miss the allotted time you have to wait or scrap the test completely for that day. * An obvious issue is passenger safety. Even in a small train you can have several dozens of passengers which is a huge regulatory hurdle. * And the last and in my opinion very important thing is that you can get a testing vehicle for self driving cars up and running for a reasonable amount of money, sure they are more expensive than regular cars if you count all the sensors and hardware you need but it is nothing compared to a train car which is at least one order of magnitude more expensive. Also a huge issue is weather. In good weather conditions, self-driving <cars/trains/...> can handle themselves rather well but as soon as the weather gets bad or during the night it gets quite tricky. For example: We had situations where snow was completely covering the track for huge parts of the way. What should the algorithm that checks for obstacles on the track do if the whole track has vanished? The human driver has to rely on his gut feeling to decide if he can continue or not. We also had situations where quite a bit of vegetation was covering the tracks. The question is: Does this count as an obstacle that requires breaking or can you drive over it. As far as I know this was also an issue in the DARPA driving challenge where a car was driving over some grass which popped up after the car passed over it causing the sensors in the back to report an obstacle and which prevented it from backing out of the situation.
felippee 10y ago
You assume it has already happened. Let me remind you: all the self driving stuff right not is in tests. Still mostly in favourable driving conditions. The whole self driving thing may still not happen, if it turns out (after a few accidents) that the technology is not quite there.
- jjeaff 10y ago
  But I think the model has already been proven out with many millions of miles driven and very few accidents. The tech is here. It isn't mainstream, but it is here and it is better than humans in most conditions.
  - felippee 10y ago
    Cars have driven billions on miles on cruise control, but that does not mean that cruise control can autonomously drive a car. Planes fly billions of miles on autopilot and yet we keep the pilots. What matters is not the number of miles driven, but the situations in which the system had no idea what to do and had to disengage, and moreover the variety of such situations. Indeed these situations are in the tail of the distribution, but that tail is a really challenging place. One series of accidents, particularly in conditions which would be easy to avoid by a human, and the whole market for the self driving car will pop like soap bubble.
elsurudo 10y ago
There need be only one train operator per train (or maybe two?), which can carry millions of dollars' worth of payload – which can have dozens of cars. Despite it being a seemingly more simple and discrete problem to solve, it may not be worth it – a human's judgement can come in handy from time-to-time.

ep103 10y ago

I dunno, maybe? What would the security for that look like? If I found out trains had no drivers, and you could bring them to a stop just by disconnecting the iphone?

repsilat 10y ago
The "iPhone and suction cup" was tongue in cheek, but train drivers are already behind locked doors And anyone can already bring most trains to a stop by pulling the red "please stop this train" lever. Just install more cameras if you're worried, or get a security guard. Cheaper than a driver and takes less time to train (heh).

GordonS 10y ago

In the UK at least, there is a lot of resistance to automation from the unions. They are well organised, and able to essentially hold the rail companies to randsom until they back down on automation plans.

repsilat 10y ago
First thing to do is sell it as driver-assistance technology. More drivers move to the "just open and close the doors" role (aka the "man and a dog" factory of the future model.) Then you can let drivers just not be replaced when they retire. If the drivers union kicks up a fuss and they strike, well, great -- ask them to take the next day off too.

blensor 10y ago

There is work on self driving trains. In our university we worked on a project called autoBahn which made a proof of concept self driving train and I know of a few other research projects that worked in the same direction. However, in my opinion there are several aspects why this is developing much slower than self driving cars: * There are incredibly many regulations for every single piece of hardware that can be used on a train. They have such strict regulations that computing hardware that is certified for use on trains is usually 2 generations behind current hardware. * There are not that many test tracks and you can't just roll your own track without fronting huge sums to build a test track. A self driving car can at least be driven on a private land if you don't have access to a test track and in the minimal case it does not have much more requirements than basically a paved parking area. * If you want to do the testing on a real track (we were lucky and had a partner company that enabled us to use a public track) you have to slot into the regular transit schedule. Which means a lot of planning to do a single test and then a very tight schedule to get the test system up and running. If you miss the allotted time you have to wait or scrap the test completely for that day. * An obvious issue is passenger safety. Even in a small train you can have several dozens of passengers which is a huge regulatory hurdle. * And the last and in my opinion very important thing is that you can get a testing vehicle for self driving cars up and running for a reasonable amount of money, sure they are more expensive than regular cars if you count all the sensors and hardware you need but it is nothing compared to a train car which is at least one order of magnitude more expensive. Also a huge issue is weather. In good weather conditions, self-driving <cars/trains/...> can handle themselves rather well but as soon as the weather gets bad or during the night it gets quite tricky. For example: We had situations where snow was completely covering the track for huge parts of the way. What should the algorithm that checks for obstacles on the track do if the whole track has vanished? The human driver has to rely on his gut feeling to decide if he can continue or not. We also had situations where quite a bit of vegetation was covering the tracks. The question is: Does this count as an obstacle that requires breaking or can you drive over it. As far as I know this was also an issue in the DARPA driving challenge where a car was driving over some grass which popped up after the car passed over it causing the sensors in the back to report an obstacle and which prevented it from backing out of the situation.

felippee 10y ago

You assume it has already happened. Let me remind you: all the self driving stuff right not is in tests. Still mostly in favourable driving conditions. The whole self driving thing may still not happen, if it turns out (after a few accidents) that the technology is not quite there.

jjeaff 10y ago
But I think the model has already been proven out with many millions of miles driven and very few accidents. The tech is here. It isn't mainstream, but it is here and it is better than humans in most conditions.
- felippee 10y ago
  Cars have driven billions on miles on cruise control, but that does not mean that cruise control can autonomously drive a car. Planes fly billions of miles on autopilot and yet we keep the pilots. What matters is not the number of miles driven, but the situations in which the system had no idea what to do and had to disengage, and moreover the variety of such situations. Indeed these situations are in the tail of the distribution, but that tail is a really challenging place. One series of accidents, particularly in conditions which would be easy to avoid by a human, and the whole market for the self driving car will pop like soap bubble.

elsurudo 10y ago

There need be only one train operator per train (or maybe two?), which can carry millions of dollars' worth of payload – which can have dozens of cars. Despite it being a seemingly more simple and discrete problem to solve, it may not be worth it – a human's judgement can come in handy from time-to-time.