Freightliner Just Revealed The First Real Road-Legal Autonomous Big Rig

[Dracula]

What makes you think the driverless truck will even leave the lot with an overweight load.
Btw autopilot can take off, fly and land planes

Because UPS still controls the strings. It would leave the lot the same way they try to get us to go when have a safety violation with a hot load. And again, there is a big difference between an autopilot taking off, flying and landing a plane with a real pilot sitting behind the controls, and the pilot sitting in the airport. Tell the passengers that Sully is in the airport bar and Siri is flying the plane. See if you still have passengers.

Big rigs obviously pose more problems but car companies have said in many statements that driverless passenger cars are less than 5 years away.

Add 5 years for acceptance. 10 more years to figure out all of the kinks with big rigs and 10 more years to switch over fleets. That's still before any new hire would retire.


That's very conservative considering the rate at which technology advances actually speeds up with time.

Look, I'll be long gone by your timeline, so I'm not worried about my job. I just think your timeline benefits from industry prototypes and optimistic projections that rely on science fiction realities than real world realities. I love technology, but I think we are decades, maybe centuries away from this. The Russians and Americans blasted into the future in the 50's and 60's, and the talk was we would be flying space ships and driving to work like The Jetsons, but it doesn't always work out like a dream. Look at the space programs now. It's all but relegated to private industry, and the resources there are very limited, even if the dreams aren't.

I just think it will be a long time before Americans will allow unmanned trucks to drive alongside our families on our interstates. We don't even allow Mexican trucks passed our borders.

 

[rod]

Are you serious?

With the exception of maybe driving in snow every other scenario would take an engineer less than a day to figure out.

The driving in the snow one would be easy now that UPS just lets their drivers sheet stuff up as undeliverable because of weather conditions (even if its true or not). All they need is a sensor that shuts the truck down (maybe even turn it around) when the first snow flake hits the windshield. The big loser with this tech stuff is the customer.

 

[Brownslave688]

Because UPS still controls the strings. It would leave the lot the same way they try to get us to go when have a safety violation with a hot load. And again, there is a big difference between an autopilot taking off, flying and landing a plane with a real pilot sitting behind the controls, and the pilot sitting in the airport. Tell the passengers that Sully is in the airport bar and Siri is flying the plane. See if you still have passengers.



Look, I'll be long gone by your timeline, so I'm not worried about my job. I just think your timeline benefits from industry prototypes and optimistic projections that rely on science fiction realities than real world realities. I love technology, but I think we are decades, maybe centuries away from this. The Russians and Americans blasted into the future in the 50's and 60's, and the talk was we would be flying space ships and driving to work like The Jetsons, but it doesn't always work out like a dream. Look at the space programs now. It's all but relegated to private industry, and the resources there are very limited, even if the dreams aren't.

I just think it will be a long time before Americans will allow unmanned trucks to drive alongside our families on our interstates. We don't even allow Mexican trucks passed our borders.

You answered what I was about to point out.

The reason the older generation is skeptical is you grew up with all of the promises of flying cars and such. I get that. Totally understand.

Tech is moving at a much much much faster pace now than 1960 though. Doubling memory in two years then meant a fraction of a GB another fraction of a GB. Now it's terrabytes. Look at medicine. They say the first 150 year old has been born and the first 1000 year old will be born before the 150 year old dies. That's just crazy.



I do think you're right it won't be driverless. There will be someone behind the wheel. Just at a greatly diminished rate of pay.

 

[Jones]

School buses use automatic drop down chains, they could probably put something similar on a tractor.

 

[Brownslave688]

The driving in the snow one would be easy now that UPS just lets their drivers sheet stuff up as undeliverable because of weather conditions (even if its true or not). All they need is a sensor that shuts the truck down (maybe even turn it around) when the first snow flake hits the windshield. The big loser with this tech stuff is the customer.

Honestly the customer will probably be printing out most of their goods at home from a 3D printer by then.

 

[rod]

. Look at medicine. They say the first 150 year old has been born and the first 1000 year old will be born before the 150 year old dies. That's just crazy.

.

WOW!!! People living to 150 or maybe 1000? You friend'ers better start saving BIG TIME for retirement.

 

[Mugarolla]

We allow aircraft to operate essentially without operators. Why not vehicles?

Aircraft must stay at least 1 mile apart. Easy to adjust course if another plane starts encroaching on your airspace.

Trucks drive 5 feet apart. Not so easy to make a split second judgement when the idiot next to you starts, very suddenly, coming into your lane.

A computer may react slightly faster, but that accident is still going to happen.

Accidents are still going to happen unless every vehicle on the road is driven by a computer.

 

[Brownslave688]

WOW!!! People living to 150 or maybe 1000? You friend'ers better start saving BIG TIME for retirement.

Yeah the world economy would be ed. I don't like the idea of it at all.

They say they will be able to use our own tissue to grow us spare parts essentially and that we will go in for "scheduled maintenance" just like a car.

 

[Mugarolla]

WOW!!! People living to 150 or maybe 1000? You friend'ers better start saving BIG TIME for retirement.

Normal retirement age...950

Start working when you are 16 and work for 934 years. That should be plenty of time to save up for a 50 year retirement.

 

[Brownslave688]

Accidents are still going to happen unless every vehicle on the road is driven by a computer.

And this is a scary thought but the government could completely outlaw or make you retrofit any old car to make sure they all communicate with each other.

 

[Brownslave688]

Normal retirement age...950

Start working when you are 16 and work for 934 years. That should be plenty of time to save up for a 50 year retirement.

Think our pensions could be viable then? Lol

 

[rod]

Normal retirement age...950

Start working when you are 16 and work for 934 years. That should be plenty of time to save up for a 50 year retirement.

And there would still be some fools who would work until they are 999

 

[cosmo1]

It still requires an actual driver. Skynet hasn't become completely aware quite yet.

http://truckyeah.jalopnik.com/the-s...g-semi-truck-is-real-heres-1702594673/+travis

 

[FrigidAdCorrector]

Air space isn't congested with other motorists with ~12ft wide pathway restrictions, precise turns, and people who don't understand proper following distances and cut you off.

I'm not saying the technology can't work, but comparing it to auto-pilot on an aircraft doesn't work.

This is still scary to think that nobody is driving the 40 ton truck 100 ft behind me.

While valid, an aircraft is also far more complicated than a truck.

That's not how it works at the scales. If you are overweight, you're going nowhere. The whole purpose of checking for overweight rigs is because they damage the roads. If you drive by scales and see rigs parked, they're not sitting there for convenience. They're shut down. A driver-less truck would be no exception, unless they change the laws.

I know how the scales work. But you are also not talking about something that can not be overcome. There are people far smarter than you or I working on it.

Very selected aircraft. Drones that carry no humans. Talk to me when a pilot-less airplane flies 350 passengers from one city to another.

No, pretty every commercial airliner can do it. When you're in the ground you plug in your route of flight in the FMS and hit load. When you take off and reach 1000 feet you click the autopilot and it flies you all the way to 1000 feet on landing. FedEx even has aircraft that can do what we call 0/0. So no visibility. The autopilot will fly it all the way to touchdown point. The technology is there. The cost is prohibitive at the moment, and so is the idea of removing pilots from the equation.

Aircraft must stay at least 1 mile apart. Easy to adjust course if another plane starts encroaching on your airspace.

Trucks drive 5 feet apart. Not so easy to make a split second judgement when the idiot next to you starts, very suddenly, coming into your lane.

You only need 1000 feet vertical separation. But even still I get traffic alerts in a Cessna skyhawk. My mom's Lexus beeps when someone strays into her lane. Why wouldn't they be able to program a computer to sense that? If anything a computer should be able to react in a more rational way than humans because you don't have the "Oh crap!" factor to mix in and you can program it's limits so it won't tip or cause another accident.

 

[silenze]

Anyone else notice that this self driving truck has a sleeper?

 

[alister]

Anyone else notice that this self driving truck has a sleeper?

Personally I think the sleeper rigs look better than the standard cabs and that may be the only reason why. Might also need the extra room for electronics and test gear

 

[oldngray]

Anyone else notice that this self driving truck has a sleeper?

Maybe that is where the real person driving the truck hides?

 

[Mugarolla]

You only need 1000 feet vertical separation. But even still I get traffic alerts in a Cessna skyhawk. My mom's Lexus beeps when someone strays into her lane. Why wouldn't they be able to program a computer to sense that? If anything a computer should be able to react in a more rational way than humans because you don't have the "Oh crap!" factor to mix in and you can program it's limits so it won't tip or cause another accident.

There are current cars with collision avoidance. They will break, steer etc to avoid a collision.

And a computer can make that decision faster. But, no matter what the computer does, that accident I described is still going to happen.

It can't break hard enough, can't turn the wheel (the encroaching semi on one side, a guardrail on the other side.)

Can you imagine the first headline and all the attention it would get.

Autonomous semi involved in a crash!

Mid air collisions air very rare involving aircraft. Cars can have the same proximity warning systems, but what keeps planes from colliding is more due to that 1000 ft space cushion.

Plenty of time to react and plenty of airspace to maneuver in.

Different story on a congested highway. No where to go to avoid that semi hitting you.

 

[1BROWNWRENCH]

DVIR reports will be electronic?

I was told they would be electronic already by now.

 

[Brownslave688]

There are current cars with collision avoidance. They will break, steer etc to avoid a collision.

And a computer can make that decision faster. But, no matter what the computer does, that accident I described is still going to happen.

It can't break hard enough, can't turn the wheel (the encroaching semi on one side, a guardrail on the other side.)

Can you imagine the first headline and all the attention it would get.

Autonomous semi involved in a crash!

Mid air collisions air very rare involving aircraft. Cars can have the same proximity warning systems, but what keeps planes from colliding is more due to that 1000 ft space cushion.

Plenty of time to react and plenty of airspace to maneuver in.

Different story on a congested highway. No where to go to avoid that semi hitting you.

What's your point? If it's unavoidable it wouldn't matter if a human were driving or not.


There would be not headlines I can promise you that. Not unless the automation lead to the accident.