4 ms·
what are the goals of the policy of banning autonomous tractors? I imagine it is at least twofold: a) provide jobs for manual laborers b) more of an equal pl
by andsoitis 1y ago
what are the goals of the policy of banning autonomous tractors?
I imagine it is at least twofold:
a) provide jobs for manual laborers
b) more of an equal playing field between large-scale industrial agriculture companies and "sole proprietor" farmers
EDIT: turns out to be a case of safety regulation written before more recent advances in tractor automation. So my guesses were wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_tractor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_tractor
- codingdave 1y agoSafety is a far more likely concern.
- Loughla 1y agoI'm not sure about that. A field is sort of a best case scenario for autonomous vehicles. There are only well established obstacles, no pedestrians, and straight lines for large distances. Source: autosteer on JD tractors let me get really good at switch games.
- 9cb14c1ec0 1y agoNot only that, but if a tractor encounters an obstacle in the field that it doesn't know what to do about, it can simply stop right where it is and wait for human intervention, unlike cars where you don't want them stopping dead in the middle of the road. Also tractor speeds in fields are far lower than cars on roads, so automatically a huge safety advantage there.
- lokar 1y agoI agree, it’s private property not open to the public. As long as the owner assumes responsibility for injuries it should be fine. Perhaps some updated osha rules, I assume they have rules for existing equipment.
- aaronbaugher 1y agoUntil you get to the end of the field. If a malfunction means you don't turn or stop, the next thing in front of you might be a house, a school, or a highway. Today's farm tractors are powerful, heavy machines that can plow right through a lot of obstacles. I'd want to have a couple extra layers of fail-safes, and probably a human overseer with a kill switch. That could be someone watching a bunch of tractors remotely on monitors.
- Pet_Ant 1y agoI mean a GPS geo-fence is pretty simple and fail safe. I'm more worried about something like humans unexpectedly in the field. Imagine a migrant crossing a field and getting run over by a combine.
- aaronbaugher 1y agoYeah, that's a concern too. I'm not opposed to the idea of autonomous (or better near-autonomous) tractors working in fields. They'd definitely be safer than autonomous vehicles on roads. I just think people, especially at a tech-loving forum like this, are a little too quick to assume safety concerns are fully covered. Perhaps they can be, but will they be when large corporate farms cut corners on things like maintenance? I started driving tractors when I was 10, and I've been in a couple situations where equipment failure required some quick action to get stopped before serious damage was done. Shit happens, and should be expected to happen and prepared for.
- ccozan 1y agoBut I expect a autonomous tractor - like an auto - to have a radar and be able to stop if an obstacle is there - not only migrants, how about wild animals, etc.
- pfdietz 1y agoA GPS-driven cutoff seems like an obvious thing to have in this situation, no?
- 1y ago
- dragonwriter 1y ago> A field is sort of a best case scenario for autonomous vehicles There is no “autonomous tractor law”, the headline is misleading. There is a farm safety law that has been in place since long before any autonomous production farm equipment existed which prohibits self-propelled equipment without the operator seat occupied at all times while in operation. It was not unheard of for people to get on and off low-speed self-propelled (that was not self-driving) farm equipment while in operation, in an attempt at efficiency/multitasking, with attendant safety risks. That’s what the law was directed at.
- aaronbaugher 1y agoAlso, it's useful to remember that before tractors, there were horses, and the equipment pulled by horses was gradually converted to tractors. With horses, the farmer might sit on the equipment and use reins, or he might walk in front of the horses and lead them. Either way, he had control of them without literally sitting on them. So when the first tractors came along, it probably wasn't automatic to think you needed to sit directly on it. And it was a lot easier to hop on and off them when they were small machines without cabs. They were pretty dangerous, really, with little in the way of safety protection over moving parts, so I can see why people thought a rule was needed to keep the driver on the seat.
- burkaman 1y agoThe video says the regulation was written 50 years ago, and just says "operators must be stationed at the controls". Autonomous tractors were not commercially available yet, it's just a well-intentioned safety regulation that needs to updated now.
- tantalor 1y agoDoes it define "stationed" and "controls"? If the automated tractor is remotely controlled by my smartphone (IANAF) in my pocket, does that count?
- burkaman 1y agohttps://www.dir.ca.gov/title8/3441.html https://www.dir.ca.gov/title8/3441.html It says: "All self-propelled equipment shall, when under its own power and in motion, have an operator stationed at the vehicular controls. This shall not prohibit the operator occupying or being stationed at a location on the vehicle other than the normal driving position or cab if controls for starting, accelerating, decelerating and stopping are provided adjacent and convenient to the alternate position." So you do explicitly need to be physically on the vehicle at all times while it's moving. It has further rules for remotely operating "Furrow guided self-propelled mobile equipment" (which is not how modern autonomous tractors work), but even for those you need to be actively watching it and have immediate access to steering and braking controls.
- tantalor 1y agoThis seems to open the door to operators not being literally in the driver's seat. I think "location on the vehicle" could reasonably be interpreted as including virtual locations. For example a drone operator is physically in a little room somewhere but they are in actuality operating controls that fulfill all of those requirements remotely. It's not hard to go from there to "I can press the stop button on my phone whenever I want" so I am effectively "stationed at the vehicular controls".
- 1y ago
- alistairSH 1y agoThe actual regulation in question is part of CA's state-wide agricultural safety code... (b) All self-propelled equipment shall, when under its own power and in motion, have an operator stationed at the vehicular controls. It's been in place since the 1970s. At the time it was passed, it was probably reasonable to require a human operator at the controls at all times. The law is just an anachronism that the state legislature should remove/update.
- londons_explore 1y ago> operator stationed at the vehicular controls. I wonder how the law is written? Could you have a set of vehicular controls in Kenya remotely hooked up to control it? And then you only pay kenyan not US labour rates? Can't imagine tractors move fast enough whilst plowing that the extra 67 milliseconds of latency matters.
- alistairSH 1y agoI literally quoted the law... Like I said, it was written in the 1970s, before remote controls and GPSes and AI and things existed.
- aerostable_slug 1y agoCalifornia has some other interesting legacy laws, like the one banning night vision use on weapons. IIRC, in theory a modern thermal imaging rifle sight wouldn't violate the law as written (but I wouldn't want to be the test case).
- pfdietz 1y agoI have to wonder why the regulation was written in the first place. Was there really an outbreak of rogue machinery that necessitated the regulation?