Impact of automated driving on Trucking industry

I'd love to see the system that comes up with the computer throwing on chains in a snow storm.
Or one that can direct each truck into every dock, without prohibitive cost to all involved.

It won't happen.
Not now, and not 100 years from now.

 

Ever hear of automatic chains? Shag drivers?

 

Keep reading and believing a magazine to get your information that's going to changed the world. I don't drink coffee anymore so no thanks.

 

We had that same problem among many others. Trying to change 2D into 3D to get some kind of depth perception was a huge problem. We tried the state of the art 3D cameras to pick up small explosive devices but were unlucky 100% of the time. I'm sure they've advanced from then but I see the same robots on the news with bomb squads and they haven't changed all that much.

 

It's the current toughest problem in robotics... and doesn't appear to be very close to solution. The closest things we have to autonomous vehicles are the two Mars rovers... they might get 100 meters before they radio home for help. That's on a good day.

 

Actually, the rover Spirit had its last communication on March 22, 2010 and efforts to communicate with it stopped on May 25, 2011. It had traveled a total of 4.8 miles during it's lifetime.
Opportunity is still going and currently has 24.05 miles logged in.
The 'automated' navigation on these two rovers is kind of limited. The 'rover drivers' send a list of commands on where they want it to go, such as 35 ft. ahead, turn right 45 degrees go forward another 100', etc. the rover's automation is that it can detect if it is not moving as it should, perhaps driving into soft material, and then it will stop and wait for further instructions.

The newest rover Curiosity has a more developed 'automated' system. The 'rover driver' basically only has to tell it where it wants it to travel and allows the rover to chart it's own course there and if it runs into problems, it can automatically do some things to attempt to back up, go around the obstacle and try a different path to its destination.
my personal opinion is that legal liability issues will keep this automated driver technology away from commercial trucking for a very long time to come. I am curious to see the lawsuits that are inevitable with the new fancy schmancy collision avoidance stuff in the new luxury cars. I definitely can see tort lawyers salivating over this!!

 

Yeah, this is where you blame the unions and the rail companies for killing their own industry. The rail system is in shambles, and is still being built the same way it was back in 1850: it worked then, it distinctly does NOT work now.

The only way to improve railways and rail transport is to force everyone to spend money to improve the rails and rail beds, and expand the system to areas where it's needed now, not where it was needed in 1925, and improve the cars and locomotives too. H3ll, if they'd just install eddy-current rail brakes on the cars and locomotives, I'd be willing to bet that the number of accidents and derailments would drop 50% immediately.

And, yes, my government would have to get involved, and encourage the rail companies to spend money on those projects--if they want that slice of corporate welfare, they have to spend that welfare on those improvements.

 

That's a fluff piece intended to get ignorant investors to spend money on those companies. Anyone who knows tech and computer systems/hardware know that we are still at least a decade away, and that's only with a fvkkton of luck.

 

so blow a tire the truck fixes the flat itself, what about electrical problems automated trucks never will it happen

 

You know why drivers today are like this?? Because what passes for driver training now is so ridiculously worthless. We churn out drivers (not just truck drivers, but new drivers) who have no CLUE how to handle a vehicle, especially when they lose control of the vehicle in bad conditions. And it carries over to the truck drivers, too: the bad habits multiply.

The only real solution is a long-term one: graduated driver training that's mandated in the schools, and you DON'T get that license until you DEMONSTRATE you can properly control that multi-ton missile.