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I would be interested to know how would these autonomous cars/trucks behave on non-linear roads, with potholes, adverse conditions, etc What kind of problem ar

I would be interested to know how would these autonomous cars/trucks behave on non-linear roads, with potholes, adverse conditions, etc What kind of problem are these companies trying to address that hasn't been addressed yet? Will these trucks be a replacement for trains? I can see the later ones being way more easy to automate (e.g. London Overground)

matt_wulfeck 9y ago
That’s probably why Arizona is the test bed right now. Predictable weather patterns, long stretches of flat, open roads, low traffic, and legislative openness. optimizing 80/20
bdamm 9y ago
I'd expect they'll make potholes much worse, with all trucks driving exactly over the same spot repeatedly, until they learn to avoid the pothole. Perhaps Waze-style reporting will fill the gap.
- allannienhuis 9y ago
  Don't you think they'd be able to take that into account with the software? Large trucks already put a huge amount of wear like that on highways (I've seen plenty of ruts from trucks in asphalt roads). Technology like this is an opportunity to actually improve the wear patterns.
  - freeflight 9y ago
    Without wanting to sound too cynical: Why would a private company care about the wear patterns of public highways? Unless it's affecting the operation of their fleet, in a negative way, they don't have any reason at all to improve anything about it. Especially considering how this does not look like a trivial problem to solve. Wouldn't something like this require an additional sensor suite to check for more detailed road conditions? What about the future, when other companies start doing the same, wouldn't that require some level of cross-company cooperation to make sure trucks take somewhat randomized lines on the street, to reduce wear?
    - allannienhuis 9y ago
      You're referring to the tragedy of the commons I believe. So the simple answer is that they might not, and so perhaps there's a role for government oversight/requirements similar to safety requirements. It's not a stretch to consider this a safety issue, if only for the other human-piloted vehicles. But I think it could be in a private company's interest too. Better road conditions would be better for wear and tear on their vehicles. Lower maintenance costs on the road should result in lower tax burden for the company (assuming company pairs fair share of their taxes which admittedly may not be true). Cost of software improvements like this scale well (ie cost is distributed over time and customers well). In fact the vendor of the vehicle could present it as a competitive advantage over other vendors that don't address it in any way. I wasn't thinking the solution would be based on sensing the build-up of lane wear/ridges, I presumed the solution would be something along the lines of varying their lane position to avoid the specific case of always travelling in exactly the same spot in the lane. With some randomness I don't think it would take inter-company cooperation. Just the idea that if the same vehicles were travelling the same route, that the wear on the road would be reduced by some amount. Obviously this is a lot of armchair architecture-ing from some random front-end UI developer, but I think it's not unreasonable to think along these lines once they reach the point of optimisations. Fun to think about anyway.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

matt_wulfeck 9y ago

That’s probably why Arizona is the test bed right now. Predictable weather patterns, long stretches of flat, open roads, low traffic, and legislative openness. optimizing 80/20

bdamm 9y ago

I'd expect they'll make potholes much worse, with all trucks driving exactly over the same spot repeatedly, until they learn to avoid the pothole. Perhaps Waze-style reporting will fill the gap.

allannienhuis 9y ago
Don't you think they'd be able to take that into account with the software? Large trucks already put a huge amount of wear like that on highways (I've seen plenty of ruts from trucks in asphalt roads). Technology like this is an opportunity to actually improve the wear patterns.
- freeflight 9y ago
  Without wanting to sound too cynical: Why would a private company care about the wear patterns of public highways? Unless it's affecting the operation of their fleet, in a negative way, they don't have any reason at all to improve anything about it. Especially considering how this does not look like a trivial problem to solve. Wouldn't something like this require an additional sensor suite to check for more detailed road conditions? What about the future, when other companies start doing the same, wouldn't that require some level of cross-company cooperation to make sure trucks take somewhat randomized lines on the street, to reduce wear?
  - allannienhuis 9y ago
    You're referring to the tragedy of the commons I believe. So the simple answer is that they might not, and so perhaps there's a role for government oversight/requirements similar to safety requirements. It's not a stretch to consider this a safety issue, if only for the other human-piloted vehicles. But I think it could be in a private company's interest too. Better road conditions would be better for wear and tear on their vehicles. Lower maintenance costs on the road should result in lower tax burden for the company (assuming company pairs fair share of their taxes which admittedly may not be true). Cost of software improvements like this scale well (ie cost is distributed over time and customers well). In fact the vendor of the vehicle could present it as a competitive advantage over other vendors that don't address it in any way. I wasn't thinking the solution would be based on sensing the build-up of lane wear/ridges, I presumed the solution would be something along the lines of varying their lane position to avoid the specific case of always travelling in exactly the same spot in the lane. With some randomness I don't think it would take inter-company cooperation. Just the idea that if the same vehicles were travelling the same route, that the wear on the road would be reduced by some amount. Obviously this is a lot of armchair architecture-ing from some random front-end UI developer, but I think it's not unreasonable to think along these lines once they reach the point of optimisations. Fun to think about anyway.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]