Peterbilt just held an event showing off their own “stepping stone to autonomous driving” – the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems. The street capable GPS based autopilot was shown off at an event last week at the Texas Motor Speedway.
Far from the pomp and ceremony exhibited by Freightliner when they unveiled the first street-legal autonomous commercial truck in the United States by having it drive itself over the Hoover Dam, the exhibition by Peterbilt was comparatively low key.
The truck was driven by Peterbilt principal engineer Bill Kahn who you can see giving a brief tour of the vehicle in the video at the bottom of the page.
According to Kahn, while the system is in place on a test truck, the truck is classified as a Level 3 Autonomous Vehicle which means that it is capable of creating a path to its destination and piloting itself there, but still needs input from a human driver along the way.
In this case, the driver must be aware and focused on the road at all times. You won’t see any drivers holding tablets and doing other work in Peterbilt’s promotional videos. That’s because the ADAS still lacks a great number of features that other autonomous vehicles already have.
While the truck can read lane markers and keep itself within the lane and follow the curves of a road, it needs driver input to change lanes, to detect slowdowns in traffic ahead of it, and to drive on any road that doesn’t have clear lane markers. The Texas Speedway for example doesn’t have proper lane markers, so during the demonstration, the truck was only able to follow a route because Kahn had pre-driven the route and it was saved by the truck in order to be able to copy that same path with the same lane changes and at the same speeds as the first time.
“The driver is the decision maker in the truck,” Said Kahn. “At this point, we want the driver to keep his hands on the wheel and stay alert; not necessarily be actively driving the truck, but being alert.”
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Source: overdrive, truckersreport
Here we go. So when one of these trucks hits a pedestrian do they blame the driver or is it a flawed system?? There are too may variables for this. Like to see one of these trucks negotiate its way through the GW toll.
These things scare the hell out of me. I’m all for the progression of technology, but the technology here hasn’t progressed nearly far enough to be nearly safe enough. Can the radar on these see pedestrians? How about vehicles parked on the side of the road? How does the ‘autonomous’ system react to a mass of blown tread in the road? And sudden, stopped traffic around a bend? Is there a radar system that can read traffic around a bend? How about coming off an exit?
This isn’t even counting all the failures that are already in the system, I finally reprogrammed the Cruise control in my Freightliner after the last time it gave me a hard brake event for prety much no reason, and damn near flipped my truck over.
The companies are in a race to sell technology that hasn’t been completed yet, and we as truck drivers are going to be the guinea pigs. This isn’t safe, this isn’t reasonable. This is endangering the lives of us, and everyone around us.
I won’t help further this project, however I will preplan a daring hold up or two. Although with the numbn#t sm@ck heads that have been so rude these last few years I really am kinda glad to see the dawn of driverless trucks. I have some mixed feelings about this much stupid on the highway.
These autonomous trucks are still in testing phases and are completely cost prohibited for companies to purchase them as of yet. It will be at least ten years before any significant number of these are on the highways. Maybey twenty years depending on the number of accidents they have in the next few Years and oh yeah they will be in some accidents. They are unable to anticipate the actions of others as we professional drivers do. They lack instincts.
If they can keep the truck from slamming the brakes for no good reason at all, then I’m all for it.
this system is ok but really it will change lanes based on what you drover before, that doesn’t seem safe. The freightliner system seems really good. Only can be used on freeways so the people worried about pedestrians don’t have to worry. Freightliner only works at highway speeds. and you take over at times like going through tolls. please take time to learn about the system before bashing it
Hackers will have the codes for the rigs and sell them online to highest bidder. Which could be hijackers, or terrorist.
This technology should be ceased by the Feds as a threat to national security.
Again learn about the system before speaking. It doesn’t run off internet based system so there’s no codes or system to hack. The computer system is on the truck so unless you have a computer hacker in the cab you don’t have to worry
Okay, so now you’re supposed to stay alert and focused on the road while the truck drives itself for you? I don’t know about other people, but I already struggle on long stretches with wandering attention and highway hypnosis and the occasional falling asleep driving (I’m a mechanic, not a driver – and the world is a better place for it). I think something like this would make issues like mine worse and end up giving similar problems to drivers that have never experienced them. Could you imagine trying to just sit and watch the road while doing nothing for hours on end? I just can’t see the application for this kind of thing until it is perfected to full automation.