More Geeks wanting to develop autonomous trucks

A truck traveling down a highway is not complicated.

A truck driving in NYC by computer? That I wanna see.
I think all other vehicles around that truck in NYC would need to be automated also, otherwise the truck woud l get into a situation it couldn't get out of.
Unless the truck can go into kamikaze mode.

 

It will happen. The best systems now are sort of like rookie drivers: they can get down the road okay, but the have yet to develop the ability to see into the future. Oh sure, they can see when a collision is imminent, but the ability to see that develop before it's even detectable by tracking targets is what sets the best drivers apart. And that is a long way off. That requires analyzing not just your path in relation to the paths of vehicles around you, it also requires analyzing the paths of all the other vehicles in relation to each other. That's a major jump in required computing power.

The part that is currently beyond us is hard to even describe. The best way I know to put it is that the best drivers see the future. Those of you who have that know what I mean, you see trouble before the others that are actually involved in it even realize there's trouble. And that takes AI (Artificial intelligence), not raw computing power. Learning to read to subtleties that are hard to measure. Everything from noticing an oh-so-slight-slip of another car, a sign they are at the ragged edge of traction, to your sense that the idiot next to you is fixing to attempt a maneuver beyond his skill set. Even just realizing that the idiot coming down the ramp who plans on forcing his way in may affect traffic 5 or 6 lanes over. Those things aren't easily foreseeable by an algorithm (or a good percentage of the drivers on the road, for that matter.) And we may never make that leap in computing, to true AI.

Now if every vehicle is computer controlled, things are much easier, as there are no unexpected moves, and everything is coordinated. The example of aircraft and ATC is actually a fairly decent analogy. Everything works great when everyone is part of the system, but throw in a few aircraft trying to do their own thing without communicating with everyone else, and chaos soon ensues. It just introduced too many variables to account for, any soon the smooth flow has been fubar'd in mostly unpredictable ways.

So while we'll see self-driving vehicles to some extent, the most likely scenario for now is the smart lane, where every vehicle using that lane is in communication with the lane, which in turn communicates with the other nearby vehicles. In effect all the independent vehicles become part of a larger machine, and under coordinated control.

 

This is what it will take for rigs to be successful - the end all is total fleet, 4-wheeler as well, automation. It will happen.

The only thing we're going to have the luxury to drive is the shopping cart. When the death toll rises on that, it'll be automated as well.

The essence of my idea is one of 'hive mind', everything will react to everything around it, like bees and geese - they never have aviation accidents amongst themselves. That is the goal and it will be the result when all is said and done, minus the rogues.

 

All you had better think again with self driving vehicle's. A person was just killed in a Tesla with a Auto Pilot. Try to Google it. This I think will put an end to it for awhile depending on the lawsuit.

 

Here's the thread about that accident. The driver of the car was watching a movie. The car failed to differentiate between the white trailer and the bright Florida sky. The car never applied the brakes.

 

That thread did not come through, but what you said is what I heard.

 

So, one death with how many vehicles on the road? And how many miles? And these vehicles are somehow LESS safe than the general driving public? Am I missing something here?

 

I don't keep on top of the news but what I've read so far is that as far as so called self driving cars, there are very few, Google is still experimenting with them, so the number of these so called autonomous cars are so small and not totally proven, so what your missing is one death is huge and shows that the technology is flawed.

 

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...s/self-driving-car-vs-tractor-trailer.318095/

Oops. Forgot the link to the thread.