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I've been observing that AI tools often don't really replace people, but rather amplify the amount of work that a single individual can do. In that way, rather
by sva_ 3y ago
I've been observing that AI tools often don't really replace people, but rather amplify the amount of work that a single individual can do. In that way, rather than seeking to replace truck drivers, it might first be more useful to make it possible that one driver can navigate two trucks in tandem, and later perhaps more. The largest issue with autonomous driving seems to be the ~20% edge cases that may occur, and have high variance, and ~80% could be automated. So perhaps at some point a single driver could drive more than one or two trucks.
It seems like there are a lot of 'default routes' that trucks take, and in the beginning, it'd probably just be a small number of highway routes that could get clearance in such a way, and then scale up.
- rexreed 3y agoThis is called "augmented Intelligence": https://www.cognilytica.com/ai-today-podcast-020-augmented-intelligence/ https://www.cognilytica.com/ai-today-podcast-020-augmented-i...
- BobaFloutist 3y ago> two trucks in tandem, and later perhaps more. Or we could put them on tracks and physically attach them to one another.
- fleischhauf 3y agoyou mean like a .. train
- skybrian 3y agoNo. Trains are great for what they do, but roads go more places.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoDo roads have to go more places? Are they dramatically cheaper and easier to make and cheaper to maintain than train tracks? Or do we just already have a bunch of them? Mind you I'm not taking about last-mile dirt road up a mountain to one family, but the massive arteries with enormous throughput that constitute the vast majority of lbs/mile of shipping.
- sarchertech 3y agoRailroads have much much stricter requirements with respect to maximum allowed curvature and slope. So yes roads can go far more places than rails can.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoDuly noted
- k_process 3y agoor like a … road train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_train
- ItsMonkk 3y agoYep. I don't really see the point in anything long range for autonomous vehicles in the near-term. We should optimize the use-case of them driving people and goods to and from train stations. For this use-case it should be entirely fine if the max speed they can achieve is 20mph. The stopping times and force that can be achieved at those speeds should bring down the danger by quite a bit.
- sva_ 3y agoYeah that would be ideal. Sadly a lot of stuff goes wrong in building rail because governments have to do it and clearly suck at it, and if it weren't so, there wouldn't be nearly as many trucks on the road. Unlike building rail, the concept I outlined would be feasible to do for a private corporation though, even a startup. The delta in necessary resources between the two is huge. I'm also not quite convinced that you can pack nearly as much cargo on a rail at the same time (with different destinations) as on the road, but the reason for that believe might be the fact that I'm not a rail expert.
- datameta 3y agoFortunately not all governments are terrible at rail infra planning/upkeep. Perhaps autonomous trucks as you outline could do the last X miles from the point the train offloads.
- sarchertech 3y agoThe US is number 3 in the world in both total tonne-kilometers and tonne-kilometers per capita shipped by rail, and it’s in the top 10 in percentage of freight moved by rail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...
- datameta 3y agoI could been specific - I mean passenger rail.
- sarchertech 3y agoYou’re replying to a comment about freight rail, in a thread about freight rail, and you mentioned autonomous trucking. I’m thoroughly confused how you could possibly have been talking about passenger rail.