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Registering hypothesis before I read the article: No, they arn't. They are not yet doing this so at least the tense of the article is wrong. It's likely that t

Registering hypothesis before I read the article: No, they arn't. They are not yet doing this so at least the tense of the article is wrong. It's likely that there's an internal project but it's nowhere near rollout. Ok, brb. ... Post Read: Better than I expected! The title gave me the impression that the trucks are doing deliveries to end customers. Not the case. They are doing 'middle mile' trips between two known points over and over. Also they have remote safety drivers watching. The underlying company is Gatik (https://gatik.ai/ https://gatik.ai/), and they carefully map the exact route and add custom logic for it before they let the trucks run free. Seems like a good niche solution! With two operating trucks I'm still going to call the headline 'mostly false' but I was surprised at both the solution and the progress so yay!

melling 5y ago
“ Walmart and Silicon Valley start-up Gatik said that, since August, they’ve operated two autonomous box trucks, without a safety driver, on a 7-mile loop daily for 12 hours” It’s a huge step. Getting past the tipping point where a technology is used daily in business is important because then there’s a sustainable business. Other companies with imitate and iterate. Sure, we all want perfection to spring from nothing but that never happens.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Commercial long-haul warehouse-to-warehouse trucking was always the MVP for self-driving. It has the revenue potential (high utilization), it has the economics (lifetime revenue supports capital investment), and it has the urgency (labor shortage at desired wage level). Unfortunately, everyone wanted to be the sexy consumer darling.
scottLobster 5y ago
Yep, I honestly have more hope for this type of autonomous driving. Elon may be right about cameras theoretically containing more information than LIDAR, but that's like saying an encrypted file contains more information than a smaller, unencrypted file. Sure it may be true, but if you can't crack the encryption effectively and repeatably the point is moot. In the meantime stuff like this is what's going to really make an economic difference. Boring supply chain shit that makes everything marginally cheaper and most people are completely unaware.
- jakeinspace 5y ago
  Not only that, but it should be pretty clear that using a combination of vision technologies (cameras, LIDAR, RADAR, sonar...) means that more edge cases should be covered. The failure conditions for optical wavelength cameras are different than for LiDAR, or infrared cameras, so really good sensor fusion should theoretically reduce the number of situations in which the internal model of the world has major errors. I'd rather be in a self driving car with 6 cameras and a 360-degree LiDAR then one with 20 cameras, even if 20 cameras are providing more information about the world.
  - aspenmayer 5y ago
    This is analogous to the megapixel quantity versus quality debate. I’ll take fewer megapixels paired with a good lens over more MPs with substandard glass anyday.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    Now you just need really good sensor fusion, and a 3rd sensor type to outvote the stalemate of the other 2. Oh wait, now they give 3 different results
- dghughes 5y ago
  I don't have much hope for driverless trucks at least not here in Canada during the winter. A 50 ton 30m long driverless truck fishtailing on ice would be dangerous.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Once you go driverless, the truck size can be reduced since that large overhead (the human driver) that needed amortized over a big load is gone. They could still join up to make trains at certain points in the journey but even then they'll all be able to brake or avoid obstacles individually.
    - thomastjeffery 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

melling 5y ago

“ Walmart and Silicon Valley start-up Gatik said that, since August, they’ve operated two autonomous box trucks, without a safety driver, on a 7-mile loop daily for 12 hours” It’s a huge step. Getting past the tipping point where a technology is used daily in business is important because then there’s a sustainable business. Other companies with imitate and iterate. Sure, we all want perfection to spring from nothing but that never happens.

ethbr0 5y ago
Commercial long-haul warehouse-to-warehouse trucking was always the MVP for self-driving. It has the revenue potential (high utilization), it has the economics (lifetime revenue supports capital investment), and it has the urgency (labor shortage at desired wage level). Unfortunately, everyone wanted to be the sexy consumer darling.

scottLobster 5y ago

Yep, I honestly have more hope for this type of autonomous driving. Elon may be right about cameras theoretically containing more information than LIDAR, but that's like saying an encrypted file contains more information than a smaller, unencrypted file. Sure it may be true, but if you can't crack the encryption effectively and repeatably the point is moot. In the meantime stuff like this is what's going to really make an economic difference. Boring supply chain shit that makes everything marginally cheaper and most people are completely unaware.

jakeinspace 5y ago
Not only that, but it should be pretty clear that using a combination of vision technologies (cameras, LIDAR, RADAR, sonar...) means that more edge cases should be covered. The failure conditions for optical wavelength cameras are different than for LiDAR, or infrared cameras, so really good sensor fusion should theoretically reduce the number of situations in which the internal model of the world has major errors. I'd rather be in a self driving car with 6 cameras and a 360-degree LiDAR then one with 20 cameras, even if 20 cameras are providing more information about the world.
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  This is analogous to the megapixel quantity versus quality debate. I’ll take fewer megapixels paired with a good lens over more MPs with substandard glass anyday.
- mavhc 5y ago
  Now you just need really good sensor fusion, and a 3rd sensor type to outvote the stalemate of the other 2. Oh wait, now they give 3 different results
dghughes 5y ago
I don't have much hope for driverless trucks at least not here in Canada during the winter. A 50 ton 30m long driverless truck fishtailing on ice would be dangerous.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Once you go driverless, the truck size can be reduced since that large overhead (the human driver) that needed amortized over a big load is gone. They could still join up to make trains at certain points in the journey but even then they'll all be able to brake or avoid obstacles individually.
  - thomastjeffery 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]