8 ms·

Can someone explain why there aren't that many autonomous _trains_? And I don't mean SFO airport train and others like it, but a real, full-size train moving pe

by m0zg 8y ago

Can someone explain why there aren't that many autonomous _trains_? And I don't mean SFO airport train and others like it, but a real, full-size train moving people or goods around the country. Seems like every other year a train flies off the rails due to nothing more than negligence of train's engineer. Why not automate this completely? You don't even have to steer.

maxxxxx 8y ago
I wonder about that too. It seems a much simpler and constrained task than driving a car.
- topspin 8y ago
  > It seems a much simpler and constrained task than driving a car. It's not. Always assume that whatever limit can be exploited to maximize economic return is pursued to the maximum extent by everyone involved at nearly all times. If you do so you will be right more often than you are wrong. An occupation that is conceptually "easy" is made demanding through optimization. Heavy freight trains that navigate hilly or mountainous terrain can rip themselves apart when they are not operated with precision. Passenger train operators can be held to schedules where deviation in either direction is measured in seconds regardless of weather, faults, mistakes, uncooperative passengers, etc. When large amounts of capital are involved always assume that the expectations will be extraordinary and, therefore, difficult to automate.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Chetan496 8y ago
Dockland light railway is completely automated. This train line is in London. I have travelled on it. There is no engine room or train driver. It felt interesting to sit in the very first train cabin which would usually be an engine room in other trains.
- isostatic 8y ago
  Except when the guard takes over driving, which happens a lot
kough 8y ago
http://www.calibregroup.com/projects/project/autohaul-project http://www.calibregroup.com/projects/project/autohaul-projec... is the physically largest autonomous system in the world.
tialaramex 8y ago
The human can look out of the front window and notice that e.g. the cliff above has fallen onto the track, or cows have broken through a fence and are now standing on the track. Something like the DLR normally operates autonomously, there's a member of staff trained to drive it on every train but it's actually slower and more dangerous if they have to. But that's a completely grade separated system, cows on the DLR is about as likely as cows up the Empire State. And still the first train every morning is manual because maintenance teams are forgetful and a passenger sat at the front doesn't want a metal pry bar in the face when some idiot left it on the track despite checking it off as recovered.
- isostatic 8y ago
  At high speeds a driver can’t do anything if they see an obstruction. Breaking distances on trains tend to be measured in miles, not metres.
  - Piskvorrr 8y ago
    Braking to a stop is the best option (which is not always available, yes). Emergency braking to half the speed is the difference between "8 fatalities" and "hundreds of fatalities"; Ek=mv^2 - note that velocity squared*. Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Stud%C3%A9nka_train_wreck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Stud%C3%A9nka_train_wreck - train hits bridge at 90 kph instead of 135 kph; a 2/3 speed, but less than 1/2 the kinetic energy.
  - stubish 8y ago
    Australia uses what are called road trains, which essentially is 3 full sized semi-trailer loads pulled by a massive single cab travelling 90km/h. A good place to find them are the highways between Adelaide and Perth or Adelaide and Darwin. At night, their stopping distance is greater than their headlights can reach; if they see something, it is too late to stop and the choice is swerving and likely tipping or plowing on through. This is why they have bull bars on the front (you might know them as cow catchers), so when there is a herd of cows on the road staring you down the cab can plow straight through without slowing. (or maybe tech has caught up in the last few decades and they detect obstructions from further away, but that would spoil the story)
samcheng 8y ago
It's in the works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation I think unions will get in the way as much as they can, unfortunately. As an example, a 'fireman' rode along on diesel and oil trains LONG after they were rendered obsolete by the fact that there was no longer any coal to shovel.
sho 8y ago
What? There are dozens of installations worldwide with many more on the way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_... If you are talking about intercity trains instead of metro systems - although metros typically handle many times the number of passengers - China is currently trialling driverless technologies on its Fuxing class HSR on the Beijing-Zhangjiakou route with expected entry into service by 2022.
- m0zg 8y ago
  Sure, there are autonomous trains in some places, I said so right in my post. But why aren't _all_ of them autonomous by now?
  - sho 8y ago
    The technology's only really been perfected in the last 10 or 20 years, well below the normal replacement cycle for this kind of heavy infrastructure. Give it time - it's inevitable.
  - Piskvorrr 8y ago
    Upgrading is hard, retrofitting is harder (e.g. NYC subway runs on a century-old technology), and most importantly, it all comes with a hefty price tag, all for an incremental improvement only. Follow the money.
  - jboles 8y ago
    Because railway lines, in the past, were not designed with autonomous operation in mind. It’s really only suitable for completely isolated systems (high speed bullet-train style lines walled off from their surroundings, or Western Australian iron ore trains miles away from anyone) or lightweight metro/subway style trains (e.g. DLR, airport “air trains”) that travel at low speeds or can stop quickly.
King-Aaron 8y ago
We've had them in Australia's north west for a long time. Interestingly they come with their own set of problems. https://www.perthnow.com.au/business/mining/derailed-bhp-train-a-reminder-of-automation-dangers-cfmeu-says-ng-b881013747z https://www.perthnow.com.au/business/mining/derailed-bhp-tra...
- taneq 8y ago
  > "...a driverless train..." > "The driver had stepped off the train..." It wasn't a driverless train (except in the technical sense that the driver wasn't onboard) and the quote comes from CFMEU (for non-locals, that's the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, a massive workers' union) which has a vested interest in pushing back against automation.
  - King-Aaron 8y ago
    The 'driver' operates a dead man switch in a lot of cases, and that's about it. I can't recall if this train itself was an automated test bed, but a lot of BHP and Rio's rail operations are managed from the control center in Perth, and drivers are (usually :P ) aboard in case of problems. Edit: So it looks like even though they've had the technology going for a while, Rio only just delivered their first 'real' loaded autonomous ore train last year : https://www.riotinto.com/ourcommitment/spotlight-18130_25692.aspx https://www.riotinto.com/ourcommitment/spotlight-18130_25692... More on the AutoHaul system: http://www.calibregroup.com/projects/project/autohaul-project http://www.calibregroup.com/projects/project/autohaul-projec... Apologies for the mixup
    - taneq 8y ago
      Easy mistake to make, the story was a bit misleading calling it 'driverless'!
jcranmer 8y ago
I'm assuming you're talking about the kind of trains pulling 1,000 mile runs as opposed to metro trains. Train drivers do more than just drive a train. They also have to deal with dropping off and picking up cars from the consist. They also need to monitor track conditions that aren't necessarily easy to pick up from track circuits, such as deep snow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yja2VmZOfdA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yja2VmZOfdA shows you how some trains deal with snow). In general, the costs of upgrading track to be able to support autonomous driving aren't worth the savings you get from eliminating driver. The main counterexception to this is Western Australia, where everything of value is 1,000 miles away from where anybody lives (and is transported by trains to the coasts for export), and so railroads face tremendous costs actually getting their drivers to their trains. Unsurprisingly, the mining companies in Australia who own/run their own railroads have invested heavily in autonomous trains.
- samplatt 8y ago
  The mining operations in Western Australia have also invested heavily in autonomous EVERYTHING. The massive dump-trucks and drill rigs are going autonomous, with anywhere between 10% and 100% (depending on the site) of the heavy vehicles are now driverless.
  - senectus1 8y ago
    not a lot of autonomous trains though... interestingly.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    Closed environments like mining sites or airports are much more easy to automate. The routes can be easily predefined, they are relatively short and you can add additional beacons / markers that make things much easiser. I think the problem with trains outside of say closed loop underground trains that you have a lot of tracks in varying conditions, you can have track abstractions you have a multi agent environment with crossing and that at least as far as cargo trains go the engineer does more than just drive the train they handle many more operations.
  - 8y ago
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
From the Wikipedia article on BART (the Bay Area Rapid Transit system): > Less than a month after the system's opening, on October 2, 1972, an ATC [automated train control] failure caused a train to run off the end of the elevated track at the terminal Fremont station and crash to the ground, injuring four people. In a bit more detail, they had trackside something-or-others that gave speed information to the train. One train mis-read the speed instruction as calling for 67 MPH instead of 20-something, at a time that it was heading into a dead-end station. When that happens, if there's no human there to say "wait a minute, that's not right", the mistaken command gets obeyed, and the train crashes. Now: Does that happen more often with automated systems? Or less often? Arguably, less. But to this day, BART has people in the cabs of their trains, at least to monitor the automated system.

by m0zg 8y ago

maxxxxx 8y ago

I wonder about that too. It seems a much simpler and constrained task than driving a car.

topspin 8y ago
> It seems a much simpler and constrained task than driving a car. It's not. Always assume that whatever limit can be exploited to maximize economic return is pursued to the maximum extent by everyone involved at nearly all times. If you do so you will be right more often than you are wrong. An occupation that is conceptually "easy" is made demanding through optimization. Heavy freight trains that navigate hilly or mountainous terrain can rip themselves apart when they are not operated with precision. Passenger train operators can be held to schedules where deviation in either direction is measured in seconds regardless of weather, faults, mistakes, uncooperative passengers, etc. When large amounts of capital are involved always assume that the expectations will be extraordinary and, therefore, difficult to automate.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Chetan496 8y ago

Dockland light railway is completely automated. This train line is in London. I have travelled on it. There is no engine room or train driver. It felt interesting to sit in the very first train cabin which would usually be an engine room in other trains.

isostatic 8y ago
Except when the guard takes over driving, which happens a lot

kough 8y ago

http://www.calibregroup.com/projects/project/autohaul-project http://www.calibregroup.com/projects/project/autohaul-projec... is the physically largest autonomous system in the world.

tialaramex 8y ago

The human can look out of the front window and notice that e.g. the cliff above has fallen onto the track, or cows have broken through a fence and are now standing on the track. Something like the DLR normally operates autonomously, there's a member of staff trained to drive it on every train but it's actually slower and more dangerous if they have to. But that's a completely grade separated system, cows on the DLR is about as likely as cows up the Empire State. And still the first train every morning is manual because maintenance teams are forgetful and a passenger sat at the front doesn't want a metal pry bar in the face when some idiot left it on the track despite checking it off as recovered.

isostatic 8y ago
At high speeds a driver can’t do anything if they see an obstruction. Breaking distances on trains tend to be measured in miles, not metres.
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  Braking to a stop is the best option (which is not always available, yes). Emergency braking to half the speed is the difference between "8 fatalities" and "hundreds of fatalities"; Ek=mv^2 - note that velocity squared*. Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Stud%C3%A9nka_train_wreck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Stud%C3%A9nka_train_wreck - train hits bridge at 90 kph instead of 135 kph; a 2/3 speed, but less than 1/2 the kinetic energy.
- stubish 8y ago
  Australia uses what are called road trains, which essentially is 3 full sized semi-trailer loads pulled by a massive single cab travelling 90km/h. A good place to find them are the highways between Adelaide and Perth or Adelaide and Darwin. At night, their stopping distance is greater than their headlights can reach; if they see something, it is too late to stop and the choice is swerving and likely tipping or plowing on through. This is why they have bull bars on the front (you might know them as cow catchers), so when there is a herd of cows on the road staring you down the cab can plow straight through without slowing. (or maybe tech has caught up in the last few decades and they detect obstructions from further away, but that would spoil the story)

samcheng 8y ago

It's in the works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation I think unions will get in the way as much as they can, unfortunately. As an example, a 'fireman' rode along on diesel and oil trains LONG after they were rendered obsolete by the fact that there was no longer any coal to shovel.

sho 8y ago

What? There are dozens of installations worldwide with many more on the way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_... If you are talking about intercity trains instead of metro systems - although metros typically handle many times the number of passengers - China is currently trialling driverless technologies on its Fuxing class HSR on the Beijing-Zhangjiakou route with expected entry into service by 2022.

m0zg 8y ago
Sure, there are autonomous trains in some places, I said so right in my post. But why aren't _all_ of them autonomous by now?
- sho 8y ago
  The technology's only really been perfected in the last 10 or 20 years, well below the normal replacement cycle for this kind of heavy infrastructure. Give it time - it's inevitable.
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  Upgrading is hard, retrofitting is harder (e.g. NYC subway runs on a century-old technology), and most importantly, it all comes with a hefty price tag, all for an incremental improvement only. Follow the money.
- jboles 8y ago
  Because railway lines, in the past, were not designed with autonomous operation in mind. It’s really only suitable for completely isolated systems (high speed bullet-train style lines walled off from their surroundings, or Western Australian iron ore trains miles away from anyone) or lightweight metro/subway style trains (e.g. DLR, airport “air trains”) that travel at low speeds or can stop quickly.

King-Aaron 8y ago

We've had them in Australia's north west for a long time. Interestingly they come with their own set of problems. https://www.perthnow.com.au/business/mining/derailed-bhp-train-a-reminder-of-automation-dangers-cfmeu-says-ng-b881013747z https://www.perthnow.com.au/business/mining/derailed-bhp-tra...

taneq 8y ago
> "...a driverless train..." > "The driver had stepped off the train..." It wasn't a driverless train (except in the technical sense that the driver wasn't onboard) and the quote comes from CFMEU (for non-locals, that's the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, a massive workers' union) which has a vested interest in pushing back against automation.
- King-Aaron 8y ago
  The 'driver' operates a dead man switch in a lot of cases, and that's about it. I can't recall if this train itself was an automated test bed, but a lot of BHP and Rio's rail operations are managed from the control center in Perth, and drivers are (usually :P ) aboard in case of problems. Edit: So it looks like even though they've had the technology going for a while, Rio only just delivered their first 'real' loaded autonomous ore train last year : https://www.riotinto.com/ourcommitment/spotlight-18130_25692.aspx https://www.riotinto.com/ourcommitment/spotlight-18130_25692... More on the AutoHaul system: http://www.calibregroup.com/projects/project/autohaul-project http://www.calibregroup.com/projects/project/autohaul-projec... Apologies for the mixup
  - taneq 8y ago
    Easy mistake to make, the story was a bit misleading calling it 'driverless'!

jcranmer 8y ago

I'm assuming you're talking about the kind of trains pulling 1,000 mile runs as opposed to metro trains. Train drivers do more than just drive a train. They also have to deal with dropping off and picking up cars from the consist. They also need to monitor track conditions that aren't necessarily easy to pick up from track circuits, such as deep snow (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yja2VmZOfdA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yja2VmZOfdA shows you how some trains deal with snow). In general, the costs of upgrading track to be able to support autonomous driving aren't worth the savings you get from eliminating driver. The main counterexception to this is Western Australia, where everything of value is 1,000 miles away from where anybody lives (and is transported by trains to the coasts for export), and so railroads face tremendous costs actually getting their drivers to their trains. Unsurprisingly, the mining companies in Australia who own/run their own railroads have invested heavily in autonomous trains.

samplatt 8y ago
The mining operations in Western Australia have also invested heavily in autonomous EVERYTHING. The massive dump-trucks and drill rigs are going autonomous, with anywhere between 10% and 100% (depending on the site) of the heavy vehicles are now driverless.
- senectus1 8y ago
  not a lot of autonomous trains though... interestingly.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  Closed environments like mining sites or airports are much more easy to automate. The routes can be easily predefined, they are relatively short and you can add additional beacons / markers that make things much easiser. I think the problem with trains outside of say closed loop underground trains that you have a lot of tracks in varying conditions, you can have track abstractions you have a multi agent environment with crossing and that at least as far as cargo trains go the engineer does more than just drive the train they handle many more operations.
- 8y ago

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

From the Wikipedia article on BART (the Bay Area Rapid Transit system): > Less than a month after the system's opening, on October 2, 1972, an ATC [automated train control] failure caused a train to run off the end of the elevated track at the terminal Fremont station and crash to the ground, injuring four people. In a bit more detail, they had trackside something-or-others that gave speed information to the train. One train mis-read the speed instruction as calling for 67 MPH instead of 20-something, at a time that it was heading into a dead-end station. When that happens, if there's no human there to say "wait a minute, that's not right", the mistaken command gets obeyed, and the train crashes. Now: Does that happen more often with automated systems? Or less often? Arguably, less. But to this day, BART has people in the cabs of their trains, at least to monitor the automated system.