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Waymo Tests Autonomous Trucks in Texas
- benatkin 6y agoCurious what the founder of Starsky Robotics is up to. The site is still up and there's even a blog post after the post about them shutting down: https://www.starsky.io/ https://www.starsky.io/ https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-poor-roi-of-autonomy-f5d6f4f2dd14 https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-poor-roi-of-aut... Here's the post entitled "The End of Starsky Robotics" https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of-starsky-robotics-acb8a6a8a5f5 https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of-starsky-...
- mikepurvis 6y agoThat's a terrific post; thanks for linking. It seems like Starsky did everything right— they focused on a highly safe system for only highway driving, and an elaborate teleop setup for covering the last mile and exceptional conditions. Basically they just hit a wall as far as VC timelines and expectations. But I wonder if Waymo can basically follow the same playbook and do it long enough to make it work courtesy of Google's pocketbook.
- stefan8r 6y agoCEO of Starsky here. My assumption is that they won't - Waymo has a lot of inertia around trying to build full autonomy, and it working in a corner of Phoenix seems to not have convinced that that it's way too hard. The winner in this space is almost certainly a company that hasn't been founded yet, doing an updated version of Starsky's approach...which is why I've been trying to explain Starsky's approach in detail through blogposts.
- bennettfeely 6y ago60 Minutes continues to show repeats of their glowing feature on them, how they're going to be the next big thing and how they're set to make hundreds of thousands of truckers unemployed. I haven't watched the full thing again to see if they mention the company has since closed down or that basically everything that was promised in the report isn't coming true anytime soon, or ever.
- stefan8r 6y agoWebsite is still up because it's too sentimental to bring it down. I also still have a ridiculous amount of Starsky swag in my closet.
- Animats 6y agoCalifornia's DMV won't let autonomous vehicles over 10,000 lbs. on the road with just a testing permit. CA's testing permit for autonomous vehicles is much like a learner's permit - no passengers for hire, no heavy vehicles. Which makes sense.
- SrslyJosh 6y agoI'm expecting to see waymo autonomous vehicle fatalities in the near future!
- jdminhbg 6y agoYou mean like this? https://www.11alive.com/article/traffic/fatal-wreck-75-north-120-marietta/85-3be69a7f-844a-4206-b8fe-1e1614b25f96 https://www.11alive.com/article/traffic/fatal-wreck-75-north...
- shiftpgdn 6y agoEven a simple level 2 system with driver monitoring like comma.ai in big rigs would save tens of thousands of lives per year.
- csours 6y agoI'm not sure tens of thousands of people die in accidents with big rigs every year (IIHS says around 5,000)[0]. Additionally, many big rig accidents could not be avoided even with perfect driving - they are caused by things like weather, other drivers doing stupid things, sudden stops in traffic, etc. AI does not really improve your stopping distance in a big rig. 0. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/large-trucks https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/large...
- jdminhbg 6y ago> they are caused by things like weather, other drivers doing stupid things, sudden stops in traffic, etc. AI does not really improve your stopping distance in a big rig. AI doesn't need to improve your stopping distance, just your propensity to follow by more than your stopping distance. Even simple adaptive cruise control can do that.
- almost_usual 6y ago> AI doesn't need to improve your stopping distance, just your propensity to follow by more than your stopping distance. Even simple adaptive cruise control can do that. Do you write AI software for self driving vehicles?
- hourislate 6y agoThe driver is such a small cost in all of this. Contrary to what the media says, drivers are really not making that much for the amount of time they spend in the truck and on the road. It would be good if an autonomous system could be more of a supporting technology that works with the driver allowing him/her to rest while it takes over on those long interstate segments of a trip. It would definitely save time and money for everyone. Best of all you still have the driver to complete the difficult segments or deal with bad weather and break downs.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago> Contrary to what the media says, drivers are really not making that much for the amount of time they spend in the truck and on the road. Uhh, what media are you watching that are saying that truck drivers are raking in the dough?
- OpieCunningham 6y agoVHS tapes of the Saturday afternoon movie matinee on the local UHF channel, showing ads from the Truck Driving Institue.
- hourislate 6y agoHere is just one example. If you're familiar with Google, you should be able to pull up some more articles on the subject. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/28/america-has-a-massive-truck-driver-shortage-heres-why-few-want-an-80000-job/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/28/ameri...
- michaelt 6y agoOn the other hand [1] says "Walmart has upped the ante by raising driver salaries to $87,500 [...] The median annual wage for most tractor-trailer truck drivers across the U.S. is $44,500, [...] only 10 percent of truckers earn above $64,000." Needless to say, whether those count as "raking in the dough" depends on whether you consider a night sleeping in a truck stop as work time or leisure time. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/28/walmart-is-hiring-hundreds-of-truck-drivers-and-paying-them-close-to-90000-a-year.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/28/walmart-is-hiring-hundreds-o...
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- anitil 6y agoIf you're interested in trucking, the podcast 'Over The Road' is worth a listen. The host Long-Haul Paul has a voice to die for, and the oncoming change to autonomous trucks plays a part in some episodes. I think there's 12 or so episodes in total https://www.overtheroad.fm/ https://www.overtheroad.fm/
- KKKKkkkk1 6y agoMy theory is that the self-driving car industry, similarly to Theranos, at some point switched from a fake-it-till-you-make-it mode to full blown faking it. This was either some time around 2016 when Waymo made a video of driving a blind man around Austin [0] or maybe 2015 when Elon pronounced that self-driving is a "solved problem." [1] [0] https://youtu.be/uHbMt6WDhQ8 https://youtu.be/uHbMt6WDhQ8 [1] https://youtu.be/xQhb3C2hQoE?t=3510 https://youtu.be/xQhb3C2hQoE?t=3510
- baby 6y agoIt could be repeating virtual reality’s steps. There was some hype in the 90s and some attempts that led nowhere. It took 30 years for a real breakthrough to happen.
- sfblah 6y agoWhat was the breakthrough?
- TulliusCicero 6y agoThings like smallish screens getting good and cheap enough, leading to the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Or in the case of the Quest, having powerful and reasonably priced SoC's.
- mikejb 6y agoI'd say the breakthrough term was not the ideal word choice - it's more that technological advances passed a threshold: For VR, a lot was advances in (affordable) processing power (latency causes significant issues in VR), and screen (manufacturing) technology (i.e. pricing improvements). For self-driving, it's again processing power (with the focus on the ratio between computation power and power consumption/size), but also the advances in technologies like Lidar, as well as advances in theoretical research (and better understanding) of machine learning.
- baby 6y agoYou’re in for a treat if you haven’t heard of the oculus quest :)
- kleiba 6y agoWould you like to be the last car in a high way traffic jam when you see one of these coming closer in your rear view mirror?
- ForHackernews 6y agoSure, if it hits me I know I'm getting a multimillion dollar settlement.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoAt least your funeral will be paid for then.
- ForHackernews 6y agoIt's not an Uber self driving vehicle. It will probably have at least some safety features.
- mrmonkeyman 6y agoTBF, I don't like any of you in my rearview mirror either. Humans are messy.
- mikejb 6y agoLidar-based systems are pretty good at detecting stationary objects. Humans on the other hand crash into traffic jams pretty regularly. So in that situation I'd prefer that to be an automated truck.
- kleiba 6y agohttps://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relative-Privation https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relativ...
- anticensor 6y agoI never expected that Google would enter trucking business.
- onion2k 6y agoIt's a multi-billion dollar market that they could, potentially, completely dominate using a technology solution. That's exactly the industry Google goes after.