Driverless vehichles

you hit the nail one the head. Maybe not in our life time or our kids, but it's coming. Companies always looking for more effeciency and less cost. A robot will work 24/7 and don't need health benefits or call in sick. No pension plan , no drama in the work place, less of a need for agencies like osha, and such. Problem is what will people do with all the free time, make more children?. Were already over populated.

 

The key to successful driverless vehicles is communication. Every vehicle on the road has to be driverless and every one has to talk to others. It has to say "I'm changing lanes" or "I'm merging" and the other vehicles have to react. Human drivers are the problem, they're the unpredictable wildcard. You can't even convince half of them to use a #### turn signal. If all vehicles on the road were driverless, it would be great. But it'll be a long time before that becomes a possibility, and even longer before big, competing car makers will build cars that can talk efficiently and without bias to other companies' cars.

 

Big passenger planes land on autopilot 99% of the time. Ever heard of ILS? With the modern flight computers the plane flies is self from gate to gate. (including take off, taxi land etc.) The pilot just needs to work the radios and tell the auto pilot to go to the next step. During taxi he may need to intervene depending on airport, but the planes land on their own all the time to prevent pilot error. There are limitations to auto land systems. The pilot still may be needed in extreme winds, bad weather etc. If the engines fail the auto land wont land the plane in the Hudson river for you. With driverless trucks, we would probably still need to drive if its snowing out. We would still need to take over in many cases. As for working on driverless cars for 20 years. 20 years ago was 1993. A computer with .01% of the power as an iphone was full tower. If my iphone had enough power to drive the truck, I'd say they were working on it for 2o years, but 20 years ago they simply did not have the computing tech to make any real strides.

 

The driverless cars will work just like this Volvo did, see how good their accident avoidance system worked. (And this video was shot at a Press Conference.) And don't forget, electronics NEVER fail......

 

Well, they fail a lot less often than people do, gotta give it that. This particular device failed one out of X times, I bet if you took a Dallas-area 4wheeler driver and stuck him in the same car, in the same test situation, the same thing would happen at least a few times.

 

The sooner they perfect a driverless truck the sooner I can retire. And please, don't call me to unload the trailer, let the driverless truck do it.

 

Sorry to argue but your very wrong. I know exactyl what ILS, VOSA, VFR, IFR, ect. is and it is not an auto pilot landing the Plane. It is instrument landing but not done by autopilot but the pilot himself.. They do not fly gate to gate. I've been a pilot for several years and still a pilot with several indorsments and here to tell you, the pilot in command lands, taxi and takeoffs the plane all the time.

 

I think the driver less truck will be limited and will take longer to implement than feared. I think it will be like the robotic assembly process in the automotive industry. Robots have not entirely taken over

 

They need to hurry, I only have 25 months until I retire.

 

It will be after our lifetimes before this takes hold. the cost and software is a long way from perfect, especially with a truck pulling a long trailer.