4 ms·

I wonder what's their plan when a vehicle gets stuck?

by kgeist 3y ago

hasoleju 3y ago
I assume they are planning to have some kind of rescue vehicle. But the problem with this will be the traffic jam the stuck vehicle will cause. Not only will all the vehicles behind it need to stop as well, they also need to be rerouted in order to let the rescue vehicle pass. The main difference of pumping water or gas through pipes is that the consumer does not care which part of the pumped product he gets. It's all the same. Delivering customer specific goods through pipes requires a very good management of the vehicle flow.
- hanniabu 3y ago
  Simply back the other vehicles out, it's not rocket science
  - skullone 3y ago
    At first I was like "good luck getting humans to back out orderly" then I remembered these were autonomous and can just get ordered to go back.
  - rnimmer 3y ago
    Rocket-powered delivery vehicles would be pretty exciting though.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working They're likely only running a single tunnel during very early testing in order to keep costs down. Their idea is basically a cargo-carrying, miniature version of a rubber-tyre metro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro ..which is a century old concept. Thus well-understood, as evidenced by the wikipedia article listing their benefits and downsides versus rail.
  - nvy 3y ago
    Yeah but if a Paris Metro train gets stuck, the tunnels are enormous and your maintenance staff can walk from the nearest station to repair and un-stuck the train. It's not clear to me that these tunnels will be sufficiently large.
    - KennyBlanken 3y ago
      You send a recovery vehicle down the line to fetch it, capable of hooking it, and strong enough to tow/ drag it to an exit point or service "vault" just like "vaults" on underground tunnels for power, data, gas, etc. The tow vehicle basically just needs to weigh enough. Or you send a human down the line on a platform with wheels. The tunnel would have to be at least as high as those crates and at least twice as wide. There are far bigger challenges here, like the absolutely massive cost of digging / boring the tunnel and trying to amortize that over what you're delivering. You have to move a fuckton of Big Macs to have this make financial sense, and your competitors include "a guy on an electric bike making tips who uses a few KWhr of electricity over an 8-10 hour shift." It's really hard to compete against massively subsidized public infrastructure (roads and ICE vehicles) when you're not subsidized at all.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        Has any private company in the last decade or so had a successful startup that had to build massive infrastructure? While I’m no fan of Musk and his management of Twitter has been a shit show, I must begrudgingly admit that he is damn good at building companies that produce real tangible hardware based products that require infrastructure
      - 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
        Ok get this. We make a spider bot that suctions to random cars going in the general direction that we want to deliver the package. If the car turns to go in the wrong direction, the spider bot jumps off and hitches to the next vehicle. Free transit, no infrastructure costs.
- adrianmonk 3y ago
  You could design all vehicles to be capable of some basic rescue functions. I would bet the most common situation is the stuck vehicle is just stalled and could be pushed and/or pulled by the car behind or in front of it. For pulling, you might use an automatic coupler like railways use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_coupling#Automatic_couplers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_coupling#Automatic_cou...
Apocryphon 3y ago
Service pipes?
01100011 3y ago
> Instead of using suction, which can be unreliable, Pipedream uses electricity to run a small battery-powered autonomous vehicle This.. has to be a joke? Surely they don't believe a "battery-powered autonomous vehicle" is more reliable than a pneumatic tube network?
- bluGill 3y ago
  Seems like it would be to me. So long as you monitor your battery charge you know the vehicle will get there and it can tolerate many imperfections in the tube. Pneumatics need a tight seal to the tube and thus cannot tolerate imperfections.
  - simbolit 3y ago
    > So long as you monitor your battery charge you know the vehicle will get there ahem, a BEV has __a lot__ more failure points than just "empty battery"... sending a complex machine down a tube will _always_ carry the risk of the complex machine reading down. pneumatic tube "vehicles" are simple, they can not break down. I am not an expert, I don't know which one is better or more reliable, but your claim that once you monitor battery charge, everything is hunky dory is wrong.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      While what goes into the tub is less complex, the tolerances on the pneumatics are much tighter and so it is less able to handle problems. I don't know how the factors compare, but tubes are not perfect.
roland35 3y ago
A powerful plunger!

I wonder what's their plan when a vehicle gets stuck?

by kgeist 3y ago

I wonder what's their plan when a vehicle gets stuck?

I assume they are planning to have some kind of rescue vehicle. But the problem with this will be the traffic jam the stuck vehicle will cause. Not only will all the vehicles behind it need to stop as well, they also need to be rerouted in order to let the rescue vehicle pass. The main difference of pumping water or gas through pipes is that the consumer does not care which part of the pumped product he gets. It's all the same. Delivering customer specific goods through pipes requires a very good management of the vehicle flow.

hanniabu 3y ago
Simply back the other vehicles out, it's not rocket science
- skullone 3y ago
  At first I was like "good luck getting humans to back out orderly" then I remembered these were autonomous and can just get ordered to go back.
- rnimmer 3y ago
  Rocket-powered delivery vehicles would be pretty exciting though.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-line_working They're likely only running a single tunnel during very early testing in order to keep costs down. Their idea is basically a cargo-carrying, miniature version of a rubber-tyre metro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro ..which is a century old concept. Thus well-understood, as evidenced by the wikipedia article listing their benefits and downsides versus rail.
- nvy 3y ago
  Yeah but if a Paris Metro train gets stuck, the tunnels are enormous and your maintenance staff can walk from the nearest station to repair and un-stuck the train. It's not clear to me that these tunnels will be sufficiently large.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    You send a recovery vehicle down the line to fetch it, capable of hooking it, and strong enough to tow/ drag it to an exit point or service "vault" just like "vaults" on underground tunnels for power, data, gas, etc. The tow vehicle basically just needs to weigh enough. Or you send a human down the line on a platform with wheels. The tunnel would have to be at least as high as those crates and at least twice as wide. There are far bigger challenges here, like the absolutely massive cost of digging / boring the tunnel and trying to amortize that over what you're delivering. You have to move a fuckton of Big Macs to have this make financial sense, and your competitors include "a guy on an electric bike making tips who uses a few KWhr of electricity over an 8-10 hour shift." It's really hard to compete against massively subsidized public infrastructure (roads and ICE vehicles) when you're not subsidized at all.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Has any private company in the last decade or so had a successful startup that had to build massive infrastructure? While I’m no fan of Musk and his management of Twitter has been a shit show, I must begrudgingly admit that he is damn good at building companies that produce real tangible hardware based products that require infrastructure
    - 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
      Ok get this. We make a spider bot that suctions to random cars going in the general direction that we want to deliver the package. If the car turns to go in the wrong direction, the spider bot jumps off and hitches to the next vehicle. Free transit, no infrastructure costs.
adrianmonk 3y ago
You could design all vehicles to be capable of some basic rescue functions. I would bet the most common situation is the stuck vehicle is just stalled and could be pushed and/or pulled by the car behind or in front of it. For pulling, you might use an automatic coupler like railways use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_coupling#Automatic_couplers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_coupling#Automatic_cou...

Apocryphon 3y ago

Service pipes?

01100011 3y ago

> Instead of using suction, which can be unreliable, Pipedream uses electricity to run a small battery-powered autonomous vehicle This.. has to be a joke? Surely they don't believe a "battery-powered autonomous vehicle" is more reliable than a pneumatic tube network?

bluGill 3y ago
Seems like it would be to me. So long as you monitor your battery charge you know the vehicle will get there and it can tolerate many imperfections in the tube. Pneumatics need a tight seal to the tube and thus cannot tolerate imperfections.
- simbolit 3y ago
  > So long as you monitor your battery charge you know the vehicle will get there ahem, a BEV has __a lot__ more failure points than just "empty battery"... sending a complex machine down a tube will _always_ carry the risk of the complex machine reading down. pneumatic tube "vehicles" are simple, they can not break down. I am not an expert, I don't know which one is better or more reliable, but your claim that once you monitor battery charge, everything is hunky dory is wrong.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    While what goes into the tub is less complex, the tolerances on the pneumatics are much tighter and so it is less able to handle problems. I don't know how the factors compare, but tubes are not perfect.

roland35 3y ago

A powerful plunger!