The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/25/the-driverless-truck-is-coming-and-its-going-to-automate-millions-of-jobs/

by rottencupcakes • 10 years ago

447 455 10 years ago

HorizonXP3• 10 years ago

My father is a truck driver. He made his living driving vehicles and doing heavy lifting and menial work. Truck driving is just the latest evolution in his "career" and I'm ever grateful to him for battering his body in various ways to ensure I had every opportunity available to myself.

We talk a lot about his job. It's not fun. He works long hours, a lot of it is mundane driving, and he sits idle a lot of the time.

I think he would be the first to agree that automation of his job is inevitable and likely necessary, given the dangers of truck driving. Hurling a multi-ton vehicle to and fro is a dangerous task at the best of times.

But therein lies the rub. We are just now reaching the point where we as a society are getting comfortable with automated cars. I think people will be less comfortable with the idea that the truck next to them has no human in it, and could experience some kind of glitch with catastrophic consequences. HN readers will understand that these cars are still a ways away, since the last 10% of the work required for true automation will take a lot longer to develop.

Trucks are way more complicated to drive. Once they're up to cruising speed, they're easy. But it's everything leading up to that point which is hard. Dealing with gear changes, airbrakes, load shifting, other vehicles that will inevitably cut you off, and much more.

And then when you get to your destination, manoeuvring a 50' trailer is no easy task, even for a trained driver like my dad.

It will happen, and it should happen. But it won't be easy, nor soon. Of course, I'd be happy to be wrong, and I'm sure my dad would be too.

patejam• 10 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if they start out with "last mile" drivers to deal with off-highway driving.

thescriptkiddie• 10 years ago

But the last mile is where driverless trucks are most useful. For long haul, you can just use trains.

michaelbuckbee• 10 years ago

This was my thought as well. That a new 'tugboat captain' or 'harbor pilot' type role emerges for last mile driving.

duck3• 10 years ago

It actually talks about that in the article:

We still need to create on- and off-ramps so human drivers can bring trucks to the freeways where highway autopilot can take over.

mac010212• 10 years ago

Interesting...

They may have humans do all the manoeuvring within the distribution hubs long after they've automated all of the street driving.

Shifting and braking, though, seem to me like the kind of thing that automata should be good at. And I suppose that, once most of the cars on the road are autonomous, the streets will be much more truck-friendly.

yock• 10 years ago

Sort of reminds me of a Harbor Pilot[0]. A person who holds unique knowledge of how to operate a large vehicle in a particular piece of confined geography.

0: http://www.insidejobs.com/careers/harbor-pilot

samcheng• 10 years ago

The geometry- and mechanically- related tasks seem like they would be ripe for automation. For example, the trailer reversing problem is related to the inverted pendulum problem, which is easily solvable by automated systems.

The judgement for when to stop with an unsafe load and wayfinding at the last 100 yards of a route are indeed tasks that I'd prefer to leave to a human for the time being. Maybe we'll have 'dock pilots' like we do for large cargo ships?

wheresmypasswd2• 10 years ago

Build a robot that balances this broomstick was a sophomore-level engineering course at my university. xD

tempestn3• 10 years ago

The article actually mentions that initially we will need human drivers to get the trucks on and off the freeway:

"We still need to create on- and off-ramps so human drivers can bring trucks to the freeways where highway autopilot can take over."

HorizonXP3• 10 years ago

I was referring more to the inner-city manoeuvring, and within loading/unloading zones. Getting a trailer lined up with the loading dock isn't an easy task at all. It can be automated, but it's the variability between load length, weight, and the loading dock's surroundings that make it difficult.

A comment below talked about harbour pilots. That seems like a great idea.

enraged_camel• 10 years ago

>Trucks are way more complicated to drive.

An Australian friend of mine told me that the trucks that carry load from Australian mining fields are almost fully automated, and have been for a while now. So perhaps it's not that complicated?

jacalata• 10 years ago

They may have been thinking of trucks within the mine site, which is still quite new? (http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-18/rio-tinto-opens-wor...). I'm pretty sure we don't have any automated trucks on Australian roads.

tomlock2• 10 years ago

This is mostly internal to mine sites, and the areas serviced have restricted or no public traffic.

ctvo• 10 years ago

Trucks are way more complicated to drive. Once they're up to cruising speed, they're easy. But it's everything leading up to that point which is hard. Dealing with gear changes, airbrakes, load shifting, other vehicles that will inevitably cut you off, and much more.

The mechanical aspects of controlling a large truck and accounting for the variables is probably the easiest part of the problem.

Things involving humans (vehicles cutting you off, pedestrians, etc.) are part of the general class of problems that I'm assuming all automated vehicles are working on and are much harder.

jmspring3• 10 years ago

Mechanical aspects, may be easy. Modeling human behavior and reacting to it, not so much.

I suspect it will still be years before much of trucking is automated. Why? It's not just the take crap from point A to point B, it's also being responsible for making sure what was ordered is actually loaded. It will be years before, say, the laborers at Earth Bound Farms south of Salinas (supplies large quantities of "organic" produce all up and down the west coast) automates their work staff or actually has their schedules down tight.

Trucking and hauling is full of inefficiencies, and those that suffer the most are the drivers. A pickup/dropoff that takes too long because the people at the origin/destination are lazy/slow/don't care/behind has a ripple effect.

And, one could argue "but automated trucks, what schedule?", there will still need to be a human present, regardless. I suspect said human will be restrained by rules similar to what drivers experience now.

dv_dt2• 10 years ago

I wonder what the accident rate of professional truck drivers is compared to other passenger class drivers. Certainly the outcome of an accident is potentially a much higher level of mayhem.

peterwwillis8• 10 years ago

Yes. Truckers have to deal with a sort of standard "road safety dilemma" all the time, which can be boiled down to this:

A trucker is driving a 40 ton truck at 65mph. A passenger car with a family of four cuts in front of it, and the distance is closing fast.

A passenger car takes roughly 315 feet to come to a complete stop. A fully loaded truck takes 525 feet. The trucker now has to make a decision.

A) Do I slam on the brakes and keep going straight, and completely obliterate the car in front of me and the family inside it?

B) Do I cut off to the side, running over the rail, flipping the truck, killing myself, and possibly any other vehicles or pedestrians around, behind, or coming in the opposite direction of me?

The robot trucker could of course decide on B), but there are unknown variables about the extent of the resulting damage. This risk increases with merging between lanes or on/off ramps both by passenger vehicles, the truck itself, and motorcycles.

A dedicated lane would make this fantastically safer, but who will pay for it?

creshal• 10 years ago

Things involving humans (vehicles cutting you off, pedestrians, etc.) are part of the general class of problems that I'm assuming all automated vehicles are working on and are much harder.

The more mass you have, the longer your braking distance and the more sluggish the reactions. While the problem is the same, and the mechanical differences easily modelled, light vehicles get away with lower accuracy and higher latencies, because they don't need to plan ahead so far.

JulianMorrison• 10 years ago

Are you sure they're more complicated for computers? Because some stuff that strains humans, like 360° attention and complicated sequential activities, computers can do with ease. Also computers are not limited to having senses inside the cab. Load shifting? BigDog is an example of computers figuring how to balance a shifting load. Google cars handle being cut off (most of the time).

pm246019• 10 years ago

Google cars are going no more than 25 mph and are lightweight. Different thing all together.

Here is the big thing - the driverless truck has to operate in a uncontrolled environment that can result in human death. Who is the responsible party? The trucking company? The software developer?

Additionally we are talking situations where a computer can't have any reaction interruptions for hours and hours. No reboots. No garbage collection pauses. No panics.

Can this be done? Maybe. But at what cost? It might be that the best role for the computer is helping a truck driver be safer -- not to replace the truck driver.

imgabe• 10 years ago

I think it could help that loading docks could be highly integrated with the truck systems. Backing in to the place where you unload is complicated, but the owners would be willing to invest in putting in sensors, special paint, whatever else is necessary to make that as automated and error free as possible.

eggy2• 10 years ago

We've gotten used to huge commercial airliners flying on autopilot. Granted they have humans on board, but ask any pilot how much flying they do. Even helicopters can be put on autopilot after take-off. That's what the helicopters that run from Macau to Hong Kong many times a day are doing. I can see ironing out the kinks - pedestrians, roadblocks, car stops in front abruptly, etc... I would think you could have a truck lane only like the ones for buses entering the Lincoln Tunnel in NYC, and perhaps a guardrail that could have sections removed to open it up for traffic during less traffic times?

bglazer2• 10 years ago

Honestly, I'm not sure that most people understand the extent to which commercial airline flight is automated. For example, most people are shocked when I tell people that pilots are required to let the plane auto-land under very bad visibility conditions.

patrickg_zill3• 10 years ago

If everything was smooth and regular, trucks wouldn't have a problem. However, the roads, and the warehouse yards, are not.

A fully loaded truck traveling 55mph (on some roads they are allowed 65 or even 75) can weigh 80,000 lbs or more (in Canada under certain circumstances, 139,500 lbs).

That is a tremendous amount of force that must be handled properly 100% of the time, through rain, hail, sleet, snow - and with smaller cars weaving in and out of traffic all around them.

rndmize• 10 years ago

It's already not handled 100% of the time. I'll settle for 75% less freeway blocking by crashed big rigs.

mc32• 10 years ago

At least long-distance trucks can have routes optimized for automation (be it via embedding sensors to aid in bad weather or optimizing a lane for trucks, etc.) for the long segments and then at the city limits (or thereabouts) set-up truck "depots" to have human drivers board the truck and give them override to manoeuver through more difficult city or rural last-segment roads and streets.

AndrewKemendo• 10 years ago

I think the flaw here is assuming that the systems around the truck will stay the same - including the truck form factor. Without the required creature comforts of the tractor, you free up a lot of energy (heat/cool) and space (bed/TV etc...) in the cab.

I can also see traffic lanes being created to support commerce, special easement areas for trucks at stops that don't have to support showers/food/bathrooms etc... reducing overall cost.

All of this comes at cost to human workers - but it's inevitable.

pm246019• 10 years ago

All of this comes at cost to human workers - but it's inevitable.

I disagree. Specifically, you are assuming that the human workers will quietly accept their fate.

elihu• 10 years ago

"I think the flaw here is assuming that the systems around the truck will stay the same"

That's an interesting point. I wonder if self-driving trucks will tend to be smaller, because there's less incentive to amortize the wages of the driver by making his/her truck as large as possible.

verytrivial• 10 years ago

And then when you get to your destination, manoeuvring a 50' trailer is no easy task, even for a trained driver like my dad.

I wonder if there will be a more specialised role for human drivers here akin to pilots in ports. Companies at the scale able to invest in the tech might have the trucks arrive at a queue near regional hubs and have wet-ware do the 10 minutes of fiddly driving after clearing off the Smart car debris.

DanielBMarkham• 10 years ago

If I had to bet, that's the way I see it playing out.

In the states, many distribution centers are located next to major transportation arteries, whether rail or interstate highway. In addition, many of the places they ship to are also located on major arteries. It wouldn't be a huge stretch to have automated trucks you load on one end, they drive to the other (using 98% highway driving), then park in a waiting area until a human finishes the job by parking them.

The interesting edge cases here would be accidents, construction, and detours. Whatever you deploy should be able to handle those without human intervention. Otherwise we could end up with every accident site also having 100 automated trucks at a dead stop waiting on drivers to show up. That'd be ugly.

taneq4• 10 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised. This is where a huge amount of real-world automation ends up; it ends up being much more practical to only automate the 90% of the job that can be done by a simple automaton, and mechanical-Turk the rest. Then you save 90% of the labour costs AND 90% of the R&D costs for the automation.

illumin8• 10 years ago

The article says so. The plan is to have human drivers in each city drive the "last mile" from the interstate freeway exit to the destination. The current autonomous technology is only effective on freeways, so having human drivers drop the truck off at the interstate, and pick it up again solves the temporary problem of not having 100% effective automation of city driving/trailer parking.

wainstead• 10 years ago

I think people will be less comfortable with the idea that the truck next to them has no human in it, and could experience some kind of glitch with catastrophic consequences.

Unless the truck somehow acknowledges adjacent vehicles in a comforting way. I don't know what that would look like, but it would probably be coupled with advertising and data collection (no law against filming all the cars around you and what they are doing).

kamaal• 10 years ago

>And then when you get to your destination, manoeuvring a 50' trailer is no easy task, even for a trained driver like my dad.

My first airplane journey was fascinating. As some one who doesn't know how to drive a car, and is struggling trying to learn it, I was spell bound when I watched the pilot taxi the huge airplane to the terminal.

Well airplanes aren't even regular shaped and size of the human taxi'ing the plane to the plane is very small. Yet the pilot could precision park to the terminal.

The fact is no matter how hard it seems, if you've been doing it day in and out, it looks like just another job at the end.

ghaff• 10 years ago

The demonstration in Europe shows that driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary remaining barriers are regulatory. We still need to create on- and off-ramps so human drivers can bring trucks to the freeways where highway autopilot can take over. We may also need dedicated lanes as slow-moving driverless trucks could be a hazard for drivers.

So, right around the corner except for billions in infrastructure investment.

I'm quite certain that this--like many other things related to autonomous vehicles--will happen. But they're decades further away than 75% solutions lead many people to think.

DougWebb• 10 years ago

Depots on the highway where loads are transferred to human-driven trucks, and dedicated lanes for slow-moving driverless trucks? Might as well put the trailers onto a train, and build out the rail network (where needed) to be as extensive as the highway network. We've already got plenty of driverless trains around.

tempestn3• 10 years ago

There are plenty of highways that already have a ton of trucks driving slowly in the right lane. Many routes will need changes to take advantage of this technology, but not all. The on- and off-loading areas will probably need to be created in many places, but that's a lot easier than adding a whole lane.

diamondlovesyou• 10 years ago

I wish. Unfortunately, even though that is the better option, it is more risky: everyone (meaning businesses in this case) already pay taxes to support roads, thus using them, even if it's less efficient, is "free". Plus, all businesses are connected to a road. Compared to building and maintaining infrastructure for a rail network, where you're limited to customers you've built rail to. So I'd wager the "last mile" would likely continue to be truck based, even if rail use exploded.

To be fair though, the rail networks here in North America are seen as the most developed freight networks in the world (I wish we had more passenger service though; my daily commute to KU and back is a pain): 2863 Gt-km (NA), 2451 (China), 2351 (Russia), vs 391 (EU).

unprepare5• 10 years ago

How much do you think it costs to convert a truck to an automated truck?

How much do you think the salary of a truck driver is?

How many years does it take for the automated solution to be more cost effective?

andrewstuart• 10 years ago

I wrote about this recently: "Get ready for our first civil war against robots - here's what it will look like."

http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/get-ready-for-...

tyingq8• 10 years ago

I agree. I think another difference with the trucker community (vs angry taxi drivers) is that they are "tight". They have their own social circles, unions, radio talk shows, cb radio, websites, newsletters, etc.

They already know how to organize, communicate, influence, etc. And then there's the union history, tactics, etc.

vermontdevil• 10 years ago

I think it's better to put more of the trucking freight back on rail. But that requires a lot of investment in various secondary rail lines.

That means public money. Something I don't see happening for a long time.

thedogeye5• 10 years ago

Why do you think that? What if the trucks were electric?

BufordTJustice2• 10 years ago

Trucks are very hard on the roadbed, especially given that road damage scales proportionally to the fourth power of the axle weight. For the same reason we don't ship all of our goods in tons of little cars, but use trucks with GVWR potentially many times greater, similar efficiency is pretty simple with trains in that they require less operators and prime movers to move more goods in the same amount of time.

dantiberian• 10 years ago

The introduction of tractors and machinery into farming would have caused a similar amount of job loss (if not more?). I really feel for all of the people and communities that will be affected by the loss of trucking jobs, but in 100 years, we're unlikely to look back and say "I wish we kept human truckers", just like no-one says "I wish we never introduced tractors".

goatforce5• 10 years ago

It is the cotton mill workers who are famous for their dislike of technology taking their jobs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

jqm• 10 years ago

no-one says "I wish we never introduced tractors"

The Amish?

icebraining5• 10 years ago

Only some of them: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/16/us/some-amish-to-use-tract...

intrasight• 10 years ago

I have read this prediction several times this year. I expect to be reading the same prediction in 5 years.

aidenn02• 10 years ago

I'm with you on that one, but much less skeptical about say 20 years.

jakelarkin• 10 years ago

navigating high-grade descents are the wrinkle - truck air brakes seem very finicky. But I think there's no reason why long, sparse, flat freeway sections could not be run by automated cabs relatively soon, for example CA-I5 from Tejon Ranch to Stockton, or the I80 between Chicago outskirts and somewhere in Wyoming.

wheresmypasswd2• 10 years ago

Presumably we don't spend $10k/trunk on better brakes because humans can deal without them. But if that was what's needed to make self-driving work, the economics could support it. Electric regenerative breaking would do nicely.

bitwize• 10 years ago

Truck air brakes are finicky because they are mechanically designed to distribute brake pressure evenly across the wheels in response to one input -- pressure from the driver's foot on the brake pedal. An automated cab could communicate more information: desired speed, tolerance, required stopping distance, and general vehicle stability info, and a microcontroller at each wheel could combine that with sensor info about road conditions and temperature at that wheel to determine how much brake to apply and where -- all with faster reaction times than a human driver would be capable of.

graycat• 10 years ago

The old technique was, at a wheel, hit the brakes really hard to stop the wheel rotating as fast as possible, hopefully less than one second, and then fully release the brake. Then the stopped wheel starts sliding and, then, starts rotating again, while still sliding some, until it is full rotating again, and then hit the brakes again. So, the technique is automatically sensitive to load, tread on the tires, traction on the road, etc. So, don't want all the wheels stopped at the same time. Then on an 18 wheel truck, should still be able to maintain directional control.

Of course, there is a lot that could be done, but most of that has one thing in common -- money, for the engineering, manufacturing, original purchase, in-service monitoring, problem detection, problem diagnosis, and repair. Money.

djrogers3• 10 years ago

Sure a single air brake is finicky, but 8 hubs with individually controlled regenerative brakes? Sounds like a perfect job for a computer.

_RPM• 10 years ago

I really don't think this will happen in my lifetime. Could the whole robot drives car really evolve to replace the current state? I'm not sure that can happen over night.

knieveltech2• 10 years ago

The technology already exists. We're there.

TheLogothete5• 10 years ago

Because of a single experiment in highly controlled environment :) Please come back to earth.

nxzero2• 10 years ago

Are any startups working on the last mile of autonomous logistics?

lemiant• 10 years ago

There are a few:

- Dispatch [1]

- Starships [2]

- And at least one stealth mode company

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/06/self-driving-delivery-vehic...

[2] https://www.starship.xyz/concept/

nxzero2• 10 years ago

Interesting, not exactly the last mile I was imagining; meaning the last mile from long haul to local distribution hubs.

fblp• 10 years ago

Driverless trucks have been operating in the mining industry in Australia for over four years. There are lots of long haul routes around the world that are almost entirely truck traffic where automation makes a lot of sense.

Video showing how the mining trucks operate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0RCSX95QmE (2012)

a3n3• 10 years ago

Dealing with gear changes, airbrakes, load shifting, other vehicles that will inevitably cut you off, and much more.

Awhile back there was a post about the early experience of a young and enthusiastic programmer. The take away phrase, in response to someone sending nonsense input, was "Some people just want to watch the world burn."

I can see assholes trying to make sure that an automated truck can't change lanes, or get to the exit it needs to reach, etc.

I myself have at times intentionally walked too close to the robotic carts that move supplies to workstations at my work, just to hear them stop and beep for a few seconds.

mrep• 10 years ago

The take away phrase, in response to someone sending nonsense input, was "Some people just want to watch the world burn."

That's a big line in the batman movie "the dark knight". While it could have originally came from elsewhere, I'd be willing to bet it came from the movie.

tyingq8• 10 years ago

I can see assholes trying to make sure that an automated truck can't change lanes

3.5 million truck drivers in the US alone. I suspect that would be your pool of assholes, and I'm not sure I would blame them.

onewaystreet• 10 years ago

At first maybe, but people get used to things. Sabotage by replaced workers and luddites is nothing new (just look at the origin of the word luddite). And I wouldn't be surprised if laws are passed that create heavy penalties for interfering with self-driving vehicles.

bglazer2• 10 years ago

It's an interesting thought, but I don't think this will be a significant problem. The inevitable combination of laws, surveillance, and social norms will, as it does now, keep the vast majority of people from doing random asshole acts like this.

The self-driving trucks will, by definition, be equipped with omnidirectional, high resolution 3d cameras. Who was that guy who kept cutting off our truck? Well, we could 3d print his face and license plate if you'd like. Also, the trucking industry will run to lawmakers the very first time this happens, and they are a very strong lobby. Finally, it's just a shitty thing to do, and everyone will understand that. Much like shining a laser at a plane is almost universally reviled, there will be social consequences for being that guy who torments driverless trucks.

By the way, "robotic carts that move supplies to workstations"? Is this a common thing? Can you say where you work?

91bananas• 10 years ago

This is a thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPj794EtJqU

a3n3• 10 years ago

I work at a manufacturing company.

The carts are like little flat bed trucks, and they do one thing: move empty and full bins from station to station, and the warehouse. They have rollers on the flatbed part, that push bins over to the hole in the wall at a station. The hole in the wall has similar rollers. They follow a set route along the wall of a hallway that's used by people and the carts.

threatofrain• 10 years ago

What is a person supposed to do when another human tries dangerous things while one is driving? I think the smart move there would be to record the incident and have it reviewed for police, or for PR content.

heffo• 10 years ago

I believe the post you are talking about is "Mr. Fart's favorite color". https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177...

soupbowl• 10 years ago

Future teenagers version of cow tipping.

unprepare5• 10 years ago

or get to the exit it needs to reach

Often while driving i get the feeling im the only one who realizes if you miss an exit, you can just get off at the next exit...

Going your preferred route is never more important than driving safely. People never seem to consider this when they cross several lanes of traffic to make a turn or get off at an exit.

a3n3• 10 years ago

Exactly. I think this is one of the most important things I've taught my teenage son about driving.

sandGorgon• 10 years ago

I'm thinking about India where politicians are clashing over train and road as we speak. For a country building new infrastructure, I wonder which one is more viable?

This has been a subject of long debate in India - autonomous cars are fairly useless in Indian cities. At the scale of transportation needed, nothing other than mass transportation (subways,etc) makes sense with last mile connectivity.

The same question exists for freight - should we construct trains or trucks? Taking into account offloading cost - which one is more efficient? I think people overestimate the complexity of shipping items with time guarantees. A hub and spoke model works great here - but what is doing the actual long haul?

And people don't understand the scale at which countries like India or China need to operate. The transportation needs of all of Europe are dwarfed by how much needs to be moved (quickly and economically ) in India.

kilroy123• 10 years ago

My friend is some kind of logistics manager for a trucking company. He literally manages dozens of trucks and truck drivers daily.

He says, it's so ridiculous, how far away we are from automatting truck driving. There is a lot of manual work for loading and off-loading rigs. Plus there is driving in every single possible driving condition possible, around the world.

He said, he could see an auto-pilot system being installed in trucks in the next 10 years, but the rest is all manually done.

thedogeye5• 10 years ago

Did he see that driverless trucks made a delivery in Europe last week?

andygates• 10 years ago

That was platooning with a lead driver.

justratsinacoat• 10 years ago

My friend was a truck driver for a while, and a friend-of-a-friend is some kind of logistics manager. They both had the same objections to self-driving trucks -- the regulatory necessity for a human driver to initially inspect and periodically check the load, and the last-mile driver thing (which they expressed in different terms).

The 'some kind of logistics manager' thinks there'll be autonomous trucks pretty shortly, but the implementation will look like that Simpsons episode for years to come -- the way things work right now, a human in the cab is required.

jonknee4• 10 years ago

And I'm sure someone was friends with a confident stagecoach driver before automobiles took over. Computers have taken over tons of ridiculous and complicated tasks already, it's silly to think your specific niche is the special case.

thorstadt3• 10 years ago

  Computers have taken over tons of ridiculous and complicated tasks already, it's silly to think your specific niche is the special case.

Liability and government regulation are some of the biggest concerns of the trucking industry, and could prevent automated driving from taking hold for decades. Anecdotally, I've spent a lot of time talking to technology directors in trucking companies, and this sort of automation is hardly on the radar.

n0tsofastpal• 10 years ago

It's a super interesting subject, but I don't really buy the argument that this will drive down costs for the consumer. Never mind that whole better standard of living line...that's just cheerleading. Companies have shown over and over again in the last two decades that they are capable of absorbing those new profits from efficiencies.

hellameta• 10 years ago

I agree there are examples that show what you suggest. There are far more examples to suggest the opposite though. If the technology becomes widely available and there are enough independent companies to promote competition rather than collusion, the prices have no choice but to go down.

thedogeye5• 10 years ago

How much did you pay for the super computer in your hand?

tyingq8• 10 years ago

How much did UPS/Fedex shipping prices go down when fuel prices dropped? (hint, they went up).

tyingq8• 10 years ago

Mentioned in the article, but there's a pretty big trickle down effect that will crush other businesses. Roadside motels, for example. And while trucks will still need fuel, I don't think the current economics of truck stops work if you just sell gas.

Maybe a surprise for the government as well, less tax revenue since the new drivers will drive in a more fuel efficient way, and probably require a smaller overall fleet (no need for sleep). Currently, an average truck pays ~$15k/year in road/registration/use taxes.

It's going to be a very visible adjustment for everyone.

randycupertino• 10 years ago

It's basically going to decimate the blue-collar workforce. "short term disability" is already increasingly the new stopgap between gaps in social welfare for unemployed and underemployed blue collar workers.

If driverless trucks become the new norm, expect major jumps in SSDI rolls, unless we institute some form of basic income.

http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

ascotan• 10 years ago

I'm skeptical. European roads are not American roads. According to google there are over 4 million miles of road in the US and there is very little standardization. I would venture to say that road quality is much worse in the US. I'm skeptical that the sensors in self-driving vehicles are capable of making long hauls on US roads.

We may also need dedicated lanes as slow-moving driverless trucks could be a hazard for drivers.

I wonder if the author realizes the amount of money this would take in the US. Even if the federal government put up the money to make this happen on interstates, each state would have to come up with the money for state roads. For most states, the transportation budget is a ongoing battle and I can't see tax payer money going to automated truck lanes any time soon.

My guess is that driverless trucks will only be 'a thing' in very urban areas over a short distance due to safety, maintenance, and financial concerns. Therefore, the long haul trucker will still have a job at the end of the day.

losteric2• 10 years ago

Well even Germany isn't going to start with self-driving trucks driving everywhere. Every country has standardization problems... in Germany there are ancient towns with arches that trucks can't go under (and not all of them are marked). In the US we have inconsistent/missing signs, dense urban areas built for small cars, and all kinds of crazy human driving.

My guess is actually opposite of yours though. I think short distance trucking will come last, with long-haul interstate trucking coming first. Short distances don't really need an automated truck... the trucker just gets in, drives, and arrives. Automating/standardizing loading/unloading would be great but automating the driver is less of a win.

On the hand, take interstates. Trucker gets in and drives for upward a few days with multiple mandated stops for naps/food... afaik, it takes 3 days to safely drive from SF to NY because of those stops. Now imagine a self-driving truck where the driver is only responsible for first/last-mile driving and refueling... done in 48 hours flat. 30% shorter transit time, plus whatever fuel/insurance savings the AI driver generates. Not bad.

the_economist2• 10 years ago

The trucks will likely drive at 45 mph so it would take 65 hours to cross the country. Still a huge improvement.

usrusr4• 10 years ago

ancient towns with arches that trucks can't go under (and not all of them are marked).

And that are routinely blocked by trucks with human drivers who keep forgetting their required height clearance. If there was a way to make shipping companies fully responsible for all the delays caused but stuck trucks, laser-scanner assistance systems that stop the truck before it is stopped by the arch would already be a popular retrofit.

duck3• 10 years ago

"The average age of a commercial driver is 55 (and rising every year), with projected driver shortages" and "The loss of jobs representing 1 percent of the U.S. workforce will be a devastating blow to the economy" don't really add up. There is more and more jobs that young people don't want to do and this is probably one of the best examples. They have to be automated or at some point we won't have anyone to do them. In addition, this is going to take more than 10 years to get both regulations and road improvements to make this happen, so based on the current average age, a lot of them will be near/past retirement.

thedogeye5• 10 years ago

Immigration is another way to solve this.

duck3• 10 years ago

Very true, but I guess my argument is that the author is wrong in terms of this being a devastating thing to our current workforce.

WalterBright3• 10 years ago

Most of the truck freight carried on highways should be on railroads instead. It's economically and environmentally far more efficient.

The reason it is still carried on highways is because the highways are heavily subsidized while the railroads are not.

For example, most of the reason for expensive highway maintenance is the fatigue damage cause by trucks. Fatigue damage goes up as the cube of the weight, and the weight fees charged trucks don't remotely pay for it.

jessriedel3• 10 years ago

the weight fees charged trucks don't remotely pay for it.

Source?

WalterBright3• 10 years ago

Don't have one. I just recall reading years ago that the fatigue damage cause by trucks loaded to the legal weight limit was 9,000 times that of a passenger car (and trucks are often overloaded). The flexing of the roadbed causes it to crumble away after a while. You can feel the roadbed go down when a truck passes.

The main damage passenger cars do is erosion from snow tires.

elijahparker• 10 years ago

Here's an article about the self-driving trucks that were referenced in the OP: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/07/convoy-se...

They still had drivers in them, but the trucks were automated (it doesn't mention if the drivers had to override it at times or not).

Cshelton3• 10 years ago

How about we automate rail traffic first. They are close...but the electronic system is still so far behind. They keep having to push back the requiremen.

arebop• 10 years ago

I think there's less incentive for automating trains because of the cargo:driver ratio. The cost of the human at the helm is a much smaller portion of the cost of operating the railroad.

seansmccullough• 10 years ago

Totally agree, they only need a handful of people to operate a multi-mile long train.

Cshelton3• 10 years ago

I was just saying it from a standpoint of that is has been mandated by the government (U.S.) and the date has had to be pushed back multiple times because the railroads are having a tough time implementing it. It's actually a much harder problem then you might initially think. The cost of the human is negligible; it's about the cost of the cargo, and not needing to stop unnecessarily to change the humans out.

Either way, if we can't accomplish automated long distance rail...automated trucking freight doesn't look to be that close.

mmahemoff• 10 years ago

"Where drivers are restricted by law from driving more than 11 hours per day without taking an 8-hour break, a driverless truck can drive nearly 24 hours per day. That means the technology would effectively double the output of the U.S. transportation network at 25 percent of the cost."

This suggests each truck has one driver - the truck stops when the driver stops. Aren't there systems that let drivers pool/share trucks so the trucks can be on the road 24 hours a day?

jdoliner2• 10 years ago

I'm pretty sure the limiting factor for trucking throughput is drivers not trucks. That's why labor accounts for 75% of the cost of shipping.

usrusr4• 10 years ago

I think thorstadt was talking about latency: just like express messengers switched horses in the pre-telegraph age, trucks could be handed from driver to driver to keep them running without mandated breaks.

With half-workday legs, a system like that could even allow many relay drivers to get home every day despite driving long-haul loads.

My gut feeling is that this could work in theory, but would never evolve in the framework of a free market economy (whereas a planned economy would tend do everything by train).

thorstadt3• 10 years ago

Yes, it's called "team driving".

dreamdu5t• 10 years ago

Can someone explain why we're supposedly getting driverless cars and trucks yet the simplistic task of ordering food isn't automated? Why does McDonald's have order takers?

amatix2• 10 years ago

Upselling? Why did several fuel stations pull out their pay-at-pump systems and force you to go into the store to pay -- so they can sell you more stuff you didn't originally intend to by (that they also make better margin on).

icebraining5• 10 years ago

McDonalds already has automated order takers around here. There are still humans, but so will there still be manned trucks, just fewer.

mixermf2• 10 years ago

Automation is driving humans out of jobs. Driverless trucks will layoff 1%+ of the US population, because driverless trucks are far more economical. The general trend is profits go up and employment goes down.

What to do with such an economy? Basic income. Tax the profits and give everyone sufficient income to pay for the basic necessities. That's one of the conclusions of the 2011 book Race Against The Machine, by two MIT professors.

themartorana2• 10 years ago

I'm a big fan of Alan Watts' "Money, Guilt, and the Machine" [0] as are many people here. It's most poignant point IMHO is that we're screwed until we can separate money and morality. As we move towards more political extremes here in the US, that's going to be near impossible.

So we can either separate money from morality, or suffer greatly as jobs - especially blue collar jobs - are automated away.

Alas I fear there will be great suffering...

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ssDY74nLuLg

mixermf2• 10 years ago

I just listened to "Money, Guilt, and the Machine." I don't understand what you mean "separating money and morality." Can you explain?

jejones3141• 10 years ago

At one point the author says something about convoys of trucks and taking advantage of the speed for maximum fuel efficiency, 45 mph. I'm not sure that people traveling on the interstate will appreciate being stuck behind convoys of automated trucks all running at 45 mph.

jdoliner2• 10 years ago

Hopefully our convoy of self driving cars will learn to stay separate from the convoy of self driving trucks.

themartorana2• 10 years ago

I cannot wait.

loeg• 10 years ago

If they stayed in the right lane it wouldn't be too much of a problem. The problem with trucks vs cars I run into most today is trucks passing other trucks in the left lane, or middle lanes on 3- or 4-lane highways. A convoy isn't the same thing as three trucks abreast, though.

simonebrunozzi• 10 years ago

I don't expect drivers to go away immediately. Instead, I expect their wages to drop 50% overnight - but they will still be required to be on the truck: to fill the tank, to clean something, to be there and guard it against theft, etc.

niels_olson• 10 years ago

I think one thing people don't understand is that if truck drivers are out of the equation, a huge amount of cargo will go back to rail. Roadways will clean up nicely. And if rail becomes more efficient, we might start building more rail. And put more passenger trains on said rail. That would empty out the roads even more.

AdamTReineke• 10 years ago

The trucks will still be there, just without their drivers.

Homunculiheaded• 10 years ago

A very useful visual to add next to this is "The Most Common Job In Every State"[0] map from NPR's Planet Money. As soon as I was aware of the research in autonomous driving I was pretty confident trucking would be the first industry hit. Until I saw that map I had no sense of how major of a disruption this could be.

[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...

iofj• 10 years ago

It's not just the jobs. Self-driving trucks will transform an industry where large amounts of humans are necessary into (yet another) industry where capital is the only thing that matters. Once trucks are self-driving, larger companies will gain the advantage and one of the main economic sectors dominated by small to medium companies will become dominated by large international businesses.

FussyZeus5• 10 years ago

Disruption nothing, this is going to be an economic apocalypse for huge swathes of the country. We've never seen an automation wave like this one. It's exciting times to be alive for sure but I'm also legitimately worried if we're going to be able to handle it as a society, if anything is going to tip us into needing basic income, this could be a serious contender.

It's not even just the trucking, it's truck stops, highway diners, tiny motels all over the place, there is a massive amount of infrastructure that was built because of and for truck drivers and their needs, and that's still not it because there are tons of small town economies built on the last job that pays well without a college education that more or less anyone can do.

TheLogothete5• 10 years ago

Yeah, it's not like this has happened ever before. We definitely need basic income. It will solve all the problems.

logn• 10 years ago

Social Security for everyone.

afterburner• 10 years ago

A very interesting map, but:

"The prominence of truck drivers is partly due to the way the government categorizes jobs. It lumps together all truck drivers and delivery people, creating a very large category. Other jobs are split more finely; for example, primary school teachers and secondary school teachers are in separate categories."

... I really wish they'd collapsed some of those categories, could have been even more revealing.

ddebernardy• 10 years ago

Then again, teachers are probably on their way to being (at least semi-)automated as well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

krinchan• 10 years ago

I keep saying this over and over and over to my more "the market will figure it out" co-workers and I just can't seem to get through to them.

This is literally more than 20% unemployment in less than 5 years.

Society will either crumble or completely change how it views unemployment.

djrogers3• 10 years ago

This is literally more than 20% unemployment in less than 5 years

First of all - what? It's not 20%, nor is it happening in 5 years... Neither of those numbers make any sense.

Secondly, accuracy aside, the same arguments were made all through the 70s, 80s, and 90s about manufacturing automation. And guess what, those jobs are gone now, but society didn't crumble.

It's not like his is all brand new people - it's happened over and over again for the past 200 years. Read your history, and realize that we will repeat it.

mabbo• 10 years ago

The 20% figure isn't actually that crazy.

A small town near where I grew up had a factory- Hershey chocolate- that supported maybe 20% of the jobs in the town. But it represented how 50% or more of the money entered the town. That money bounced around, creating jobs- stores, restaurants, even gas stations and hotels.

When the factory closed, everything was hit. A small town with few sources of external income can be devastated by the loss of a major one.

A huge percentage of America is small towns, and a large portion of them have truckers as their income.

Yes, they economy will recover, but if this automation happens very quickly there can and will be collateral damage.

I'm still for it happening, but the government would be wise to start preparing for the fallout now.

unprepare5• 10 years ago

And guess what, those jobs are gone now, but society didn't crumble.

I wouldn't say the loss of manufacturing jobs has been particularly well absorbed, in fact i would argue that we are still trying to deal with the effect this loss has had on our economy.

0xffff23• 10 years ago

... those jobs are gone now, but society didn't crumble.

Society where I live in California didn't, but the stories I read about Detroit and Baltimore make me wonder how society is doing in large parts of the country where manufacturing used to be a major employer.

fernly• 10 years ago

Where will an autonomous truck (AT) refuel? On US highways, fuel stations are not "full service", the driver is expected to operate the fuel filling and pay. So will some stations provide attendants to fuel ATs?

If there is resentment against the ATs -- and that is just about a certainty -- there will be cases of resentful attendants shorting the fuel delivery, or even sabotaging trucks (water/sugar in the tank).

So, maybe the trucking companies hire min-wage attendants to work the pumps at designated stations along the routes. The stations that permit AT refueling would be obvious targets for Luddite retaliation.

Actually, the ATs themselves would be pretty obvious targets for vandalism. They would be easy to identify -- driving at 45mph in platoons, as described in the article -- and unprotected along the vast open stretches of US interstate highways. I would expect many, many ATs would arrive at their destinations with rifle bullet holes in them.

yummyfajitas• 10 years ago

Luddite terrorists is already a problem we are facing.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/25/french-anti-uber-protest-tu...

http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/01/the-fight-against-uber-is-g...

I don't think protecting trucks from terrorists is a major issue - providing security is just a minor added cost, as is armoring the trucks.

The real issue is that for the most part governments seem to be siding with the terrorists rather than shutting them down.

analog31• 10 years ago

It doesn't require any kind of criminal activity to disrupt the trucking industry. Just lay off the truckers, and the drop in consumer demand will take care of the industry.

known• 10 years ago

Why are we not seeing driver-less trains?

elsewhen2• 10 years ago

there are driverless trains at lots of airports, but i think the reason they dont appear elsewhere is that the cost savings wouldnt be as great. a single train conductor is managing a massive vehicle - sometimes two orders of magnitude more than a truck. the labor component with trains is significantly lower than in trucking. i think the same is true for ships. taxis are at the other end of the spectrum, where labor is a very large part of the cost structure.

vlasev2• 10 years ago

We are. We have our very own driver-less light rail in Vancouver: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver)

pm246019• 10 years ago

As in freight trains?

Because freight trains have problems that need to be solved in the middle of nowhere.

For example, a car shell's a wheel and it needs to be cut out to a siding in the middle of Utah in the middle of winter. Communication is limited to say the least.

The siding is rarely used and is covered with snow and ice. The switch is a manual switch and is jammed with ice.

A human can deal with getting these issues, cut out the defective car, put the train back together and proceed.

How does a driverless freight train deal with this?

The point here is that exceptions to normal behavior happen all the time. Most of the time, the human pulls to a siding, walks the train and a half-hour/45mins later the train is rolling again.

Bombthecat2• 10 years ago

According to my co workers it won't happen or be a problem.

Because!

The level of deny is really... Annoying..

thorstadt3• 10 years ago

Because lawyers.

pm246019• 10 years ago

This "Nirvana" of the driverless truck is focusing on long distance trucking.

There are a number of issues with this. The biggest one is that there is already a solution to the long distance safe movement of goods with minimal human involvement.

It is called a t-r-a-i-n.

Trucking companies already use long distance trains as alternatives to long distance truckers. It is far cheaper and less technologically risky to simply increase the amount of long distance freight that moves via railroad.

With driverless trucks, :

* each truck needs complex (expensive) electronics that need to be kept repaired and up to date * regulatory hurdles * liability issues

What happens when a computer has a memory corruption issue and shuts down halfway across Nevada?

For driverless trucks to be a real thing, the very real competition from the railroad industry needs to be addressed.

Based on past history, the railroad industry is going to be reminding all the regulators of how dangerous trucking (and now unmanned trucks) can be --- and how safe and proven the railroad alternative is.

icebraining5• 10 years ago

Trains may already be a solution, yet a very large percentage (as high as 75%+ in Europe) of freight is carried using trucks. There's plenty of business for the driverless trucks to take over without having to tackle competition with rail.

mcbits• 10 years ago

The best way for this to play out is for drivers to buy their own automated rigs and work as contractors. Regulations would need to be updated to allow "drivers" to log the hours spent sleeping while the truck was moving.

f_allwein• 10 years ago

I think it's a misunderstanding that self-driving trucks will not have drivers on board. Or am I being naive? See this article on Daimler's recent trial in Germany:

"While self-driving is the name of the game, Highway Pilot isn't about letting those behind the wheel plonk their feet on the dashboard and snooze their way to their destination. Daimler likens the system to the autopilot used in aviation, in that the driver must be prepared to take control at any time." http://www.gizmag.com/daimlers-production-autonomous-truck-d...

ajuc2• 10 years ago

Wouldn't it be much easier to assure security on roads if every car had to have 50 USD short-range (500 m is enough) radio transmitter that sends its velocity and position (from GPS).

It's obviously possible techincaly (see cheap tablets), and from law POV (see seat belts requirement).

It would be useful (the device can have cheap black and white lcd screen and show "radar"-like view with cars ahead and behind).

It would also increase security even if there are no automated cars (overtaking tall cars will be much easier for one thing). Of course - if some cars don't use it - it's actaully decreasing security, so there needs to be adjustment period.

And when these things are in place - automated cars are much easier problem.

mantas3• 10 years ago

Would it require to have a backup device? Would cyclists and pedestrians have to have it as well?

ajuc2• 10 years ago

Backups - yes I guess. It's cheap so why not.

Pedestrians and cyclists would surely protest.

ommunist• 10 years ago

The author forgot to mention that it will be Russian, and produced by KAMAZ. http://sputniknews.com/science/20151006/1028104950/kamaz-dri... . Mind the muzzak on 0:51 in video.

UPD: it appears Russians also have Gazelle for small business already driverless and capable to drive on Russian "roads" in rural regions. https://ninja.oximity.com/article/Russia-ready-for-driverles...

shiftoutbox• 10 years ago

This is bad for the 99.998% .

astannard• 10 years ago

Maybe we will get hubs initially where humans make the small journey to their local hub A with a some standardized container load, then the robots take over loading it onto a robot road train as designated by the software for the long haul and another human picks up the consignment from hub B and takes it to the recipient? All the hubs are next to a highway.

yoav_hollander2• 10 years ago

"Last mile" delivery may perhaps be done with much smaller, mostly-autonomous vehicles (with remote operators getting involved only when needed).

See related article and thread in [1] - article also discusses some startup ideas for mostly-autonomous systems.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11565601

yoav_hollander2• 10 years ago

See also [2] for a description of the verification challenges of a fictitious (but informative) Amazon last-mile autonomous delivery vehicle.

[2] https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/ftpdir/reports/2015/YCS/496/YCS-20...

ilamont• 10 years ago

The demonstration in Europe shows that driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary remaining barriers are regulatory.

What about the roads themselves? I'm curious how an autonomous truck will handle a snow-covered highway, fog, potholes, and tight corners caused by narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc. This is a way of life where I live (Boston area).

The article about the Russian driverless van (cited by @ommunist) talks with the experts, who are by no means 100% convinced this is "right around the corner": (1)

Industry players are aware that just one serious accident on the roads involving a driverless car could set back their development by decades.

“Everyone has come to understand that the technology is 90 percent ready, but even when it’s 99.99 percent ready, it still won’t be launched,” says Gol, whose product is currently being tested in various scenarios and weather conditions.

“Until we can teach [artificial] intelligence to learn the nuances of things that can occur unexpectedly on the roads … what will happen if transparent glass is being carried across the road, what if there’s a paper bag that the system perceives as a rock,” the system isn’t ready, he said.

“We need a mathematical revolution to overcome that 0.01 percent,” says Gol. “We all understand perfectly that to have just one accident involving autonomous transport will have a huge fallout in society – the technology could be closed down completely for another 50 years. It’s a huge responsibility,” he added.

1. https://ninja.oximity.com/article/Russia-ready-for-driverles...

estefan• 10 years ago

Industry players are aware that just one serious accident on the roads involving a driverless car could set back their development by decades.

It'd be awfully "convenient" for the truckers & taxi drivers if this were to happen... I predict a dirty tricks campaign with one or two engineered "accidents" to safeguard their industries.

Vehicles, autonomous and current ones, will need incredibly reliable security to prevent remote hacking.

rayiner2• 10 years ago

Yes, because computers and software aren't buggy by themselves without human intervention.

vgoh1• 10 years ago

One accident might set back consumer driving for 50 years, but not commercial. The safety record simply needs to be much better than human drivers, which shouldn't be too hard, because one driver is already taken out of the equation. And there are billions upon billions to be saved, in our corporatocracy of the USA, it WILL happen. Bad roads shouldn't be too much of a problem, they can just use humans on the bad roads, the bulk of our highways are in good shape. Snow is an issue, yes, but remember that they will have the highways perfectly GPS mapped, great reaction time, and commercial vehicles can have big ugly shrouds to keep cameras clean. There is also the possibility of hiring temporary human drivers for the worst snow days, but I don't see that happening because I honestly think the robots can have a much better safety record in snow. The plastic bag/rock thing could be a problem, that could be partially solved by just assuming it's a rock, pulling over to the side and waiting for a remote human to identify it, and clearly mark the truck as autonomous so the humans on the road know to expect different behavior from it. That's not a perfect solution, but we have thousands of the smartest people working on it - there is enough money at stake, it will be solved.

mattlutze• 10 years ago

Public and political perception need to consider autonomous commercial trucking to be safe, rather than safer.

"Safer than human drivers" all too easily becomes "we can't control when these robot trucks my crash into a mother driving her kids to school," when you put it into the political regulation arena.

celticninja2• 10 years ago

I agree re: the rock/bag, err on the side of caution because any potential delays will be dwarfed by the overall savings of autonomous vehicles and lead to safer driving for other road users.

wang_li• 10 years ago

Why do you think a truck driver is more expensive than an autonomous driving system? Have you priced enterprise software lately? It's not like you'll pay a flat-rate one-time fee and have your robotic driver available to you. You'll end up paying based on your vehicle capacity, on the annual mileage, on the annual driving time, possibly even on the market cap of the purchasing company. Then you'll pay annual costs for support of the software.

Beyond a mandate from the government, I have a hard time seeing the trucking industry giving all their profits over to google, tesla, gm, mercedes, and co.

anoonmoose2• 10 years ago

Is there any evidence that a technology with billions of dollars in potential would not be used if it was only 99.99% ready? I feel like lots of dangerous stuff has been deployed when it was nowhere near 99% in the past, and I'm not sure why this technology would be any different. People talk about it like it's a lot different, but how safe are regular cars? Nuclear power? Coal power? Honestly I don't even know what the state of the science is on cell phones causing brain cancer anymore because I decided that I didn't want to know.

Why does everyone think we'll be smarter on waiting to deploy driverless cars until they are safe, given our history of doing the exact opposite for the last couple hundred years?

hluska• 10 years ago

Consider the politics of wiping out the biggest employer in 29/50 states. Can you imagine the backlash that even one death would cause?

daveguy• 10 years ago

It would definitely be deployed at 99% ready because that would likely mean "safer than people". The quote talks about how we are at 90% but going from 99.99% to 100% for deployment would need a mathematical revolution. Really going from 90% to 99% will also need a revolution. At least on the order of deep learning.

dclowd9901• 10 years ago

The average odds of a human-driven vehicle getting in an accident per 600 miles of driving is about 0.13%, according to the NHTSA. What's crazy to me is that, by the numbers, 99.99% safety would already be 13x better than our current situation. Imagine cutting traffic deaths down by a factor of 13. And that's still not good enough.

I think we need to get over the idea that computers are perfect, especially with regards to how artificial intelligence works. There will always be a situation that is unaccounted for, especially in our non-deterministic universe. It may be uncomfortable to think that a life was taken due to an error in processing, but I feel no better about having a child of mine in a car with a barely experienced friend driving and making many more errors in processing.

draw_down• 10 years ago

I don't know what 99% means in this context, but humans are pretty terrible drivers, so I'd be cool with robot-driven automobiles as soon as possible. If the accident rate is below that of humans then it's ready in my opinion.

tarpherder• 10 years ago

They were talking about highways exclusively. Using regular drivers to pick up trucks from highway exits and drop them off at entries. Its in the article.

Zigurd2• 10 years ago

It is likely that fewer cyclists will get crushed like a grape under a semi that's instrumented for self-driving. If it works better, the technology will be launched somewhere in the world, and economic pressure will spread it.

nkassis• 10 years ago

I think the opposite effect would happen and it would be safer for cyclists. There are already cars being equipped with pedestrian and cyclist detection. Sensors can see all around the truck vs the driver view having many deadspots. The computer could be forced to slow down or use safe passing distance while drivers have the free will to break those laws.

Also the computer probably doesn't have a bias against cyclist in the first place.

dmalvarado2• 10 years ago

I can see many road hazards being handled much better by a computer. Depending on what technology is used, fog could have no effect on what the truck can perceive. Also keep in mind that the trucks could talk to one another, notifying each other of road hazards/debris on segments of road.

massysett2• 10 years ago

"What about the roads themselves? I'm curious how an autonomous truck will handle a snow-covered highway, fog, potholes, and tight corners caused by narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc."

It won't; at least, it won't need to handle narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc.

The autonomous truck need not drive the whole route that a human driver does now. Drive down the Ohio Turnpike and you will see numerous parking lots with UPS trailers parked in them, right alongside the highway. All you need is an autonomous truck to drive the trailer down the turnpike. Humans can drop it off at the turnpike and pick it up. It could deal with typical weather events, or just look at the weather forecast and stay parked if the weather looks like it will be bad.

The highways are cleared shoulder to shoulder a day or two after most snows so the autonomous trucks wouldn't lose too much yearly time due to bad weather. You could keep humans around to drive the more urgent shipments.

madeofpalk3• 10 years ago

Would it still be an advanced net if you had humans in the trucks as a 'backup', with the autonomous driving doing 90% of the 'boring' driving down the highways? Humans would still drive the last mile (ha!).

Would that be significant safer and more efficient to make it worthwhile?

If you limit autonomous driving to the main freight routes on the highway, I can see self driving vehicles happening a lot sooner than I previously expected. Like 20 years sooner.

pietro• 10 years ago

The autonomous truck need not drive the whole route that a human driver does now.

Exactly. They'll be more like trains than trucks as we know them; they'll simply have more tracks available.

JshWright2• 10 years ago

The article is talking about automation once the truck is on the highway.

"We still need to create on- and off-ramps so human drivers can bring trucks to the freeways where highway autopilot can take over."

skywhopper2• 10 years ago

Reliable self-driving highway trucks are indeed quite far off. And the OP does at least admit that entry/exit ramps would need to be massively upgraded to support peloton-style semi-automation. Full automation would require a huge investment in road maintenance that many jurisdictions currently skimp on. At some point we'd be far better served to seriously invest in a high-capacity high-speed railroad network. It could move people and freight far more efficiently and could be far more easily automated than automated semis, which are really just a kludge on the current overbuilt and undermaintained highway system. The money follows the infrastructure you have. If we have to rebuild our highway infrastructure to accommodate self-driving trucks maybe we should rethink whether those trucks are the right way to ship goods over long distances after all.

bane• 10 years ago

Many of the comments here are overestimating what's required for this to have an impact. Driverless trucks only need to cover some large percentage of the driving currently performed by humans to be major economic changers.

For example, let's say they can only run during daylight hours, in conditions other than rain and snow, only on long-haul routes, and humans will do the "last-mile" piloting on local roads.

Now let's suppose that for routes that fit those parameters driverless trucks end up taking over 40% of those kinds of routes. That's huge. It would absolutely transform the economies of all the states that are looking for truck drivers here. http://media2.policymic.com/bf05a1c9e6b8a55095f8b4726e30b52f...

Svip• 10 years ago

Indeed. I find the binary view of self-driving/driverless/robot lorries somewhat narrow.

Furthermore, a lot of these sort of technologies have already made it into lorries and cars, just commonly called 'driver aids'. Such as radar controlled cruise control, lane control, etc.

Most of lorry hauling takes place on motorways, where the process can be easily automated. Only when trips from the origin to the motorway and the motorway to the destination could remain in control of the driver.

And moreover, this sort of technology could be fitted to lorries very soon. Fully automated self-driving lorries are still decades off. Partly of all the minor quirks and issues, but mostly because once more than 50% of the actual lorry driving is automated, there will be less urgency for it.

minikomi• 10 years ago

It doesn't even have to be all or nothing. Imagine a kind of road-train, where the leading truck is driven in a heavily assisted manner but still has human control in the mix. Another 5 - 10 fully automated "follow the leader" style trucks could simply imitate the leader truck. All the while gathering data..

Pamar• 10 years ago

One question (I didn't read the article, but it just popped in my mind while thinking of driverless trucks).

Is anyone working on driverless trains? If not, why not? I understand that the impact would be less huge, but at the same time the problem domain is arguably more tractable. In my hometown we have a fully automated underground train line which has been working flawlessly (i.e. no accidents) for almost 10 years now, but according to Wikipedia it looks like ATO (Automatic Train Operation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation) is currently deployed only for urban transport, while proper railways, even the Japanese ones, seems to use only ATC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_control) which from what I understand provides support to a human driver but still needs one to operate.

(edit: typos)

JustSomeNobody3• 10 years ago

Trucking represents a considerable portion of the cost of all the goods we buy, so consumers everywhere will experience this change as lower prices and higher standards of living.

No, consumers won't. The savings will be funneled directly to shareholders.

ryanlol• 10 years ago

Not really, competition will eventually drive down the prices.

JustSomeNobody3• 10 years ago

People say things like this, then we end up with the cable (TV/Internet) industry.

malz• 10 years ago

Fuel is half the price it was two years ago. So we should already be enjoying massive savings, right?

JustSomeNobody3• 10 years ago

Nope [1].

[1] http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865646660/Why-food-prices...

perseusprime112• 10 years ago

We need to create a new highway system for driverless cars/vans/trucks/etc. The current road infrastructure with its potholes, tolls, traffic congestion is not ideal. They need to conceive something similar to HOV lanes in order for this to move forward.

ck2• 10 years ago

lol - like politicians give a damn about infrastructure for living human beings that suffer every day on broken roads and dangerous bridges

they'll get right on that

perseusprime112• 10 years ago

How did we ever get to HOV lanes?

usrusr4• 10 years ago

Taken to the extreme, a separate network for platooned long haul transport could even be electrified, combining 90% of the relative advantage of railroad over conventional road with more than 100% of the benefits of conventional road over railroad.

dmalvarado2• 10 years ago

Just going to say this before reading the article because it's been on my mind since college. The end state of automation is unemployment and massive income inequality, with wealth being concentrated amongst the owners of capital.

Now I'll go read the article.

randomgyatwork• 10 years ago

Isn't that how its aways been, less the mass unemployment at least?

Maybe the inefficiencies make it less obvious?

bsharitt• 10 years ago

I hope they remember to write an algorithm so that when approaching a hill and there are two lanes each direction, two trucks will pull up beside each and race up the hill each at 55MPH despite the speed limit being 70MPH.

celticninja2• 10 years ago

no, one of them has to go at 55.25MPH to make it look like they have a chance of overtaking before the top.

cdnsteve• 10 years ago

Society will trust these automakers with autonomous vehicles? They can't even get their gas milage right.

- Mitsubishi Motors: We did false mileage tests since 1991

- Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code

- Volkswagon emissions scandal

On and on and on...

sickbeard• 10 years ago

One would think that ships would be the first to be automated but alas they are not.. why? theft. Would you trust your driverless truck not to get hacked and stolen? would you trust sensitive and expensive equipment to be moved by driverless trucks? There's still a long way to go.

mdorazio• 10 years ago

That ignores the economic factors. Much like trains, cargo ships haul a huge amount of cargo while being manned by a small crew. Thus the labor cost as a percentage of total cargo haul cost is quite low. A truck, though, requires a human driver to move a single cargo container any distance, so there's a much bigger economic incentive to replace the driver with a computer.

tboyd47• 10 years ago

Good riddance. Just because a job exists doesn't mean it's a fair contract or even beneficial to the employee. If you drive cross-country and break down your hourly rate according to how many hours you spend tied to your load, it only comes out to be slightly more than minimum wage, if even that. I know a guy who has spent an entire week, 24/7, stranded across the country and he only received $200 for it from his company. That's less than $2 / hr. A pizza delivery guy can make more than that just in tips. I'm not crying for the trucking industry.

1024core• 10 years ago

Further fuel efficiencies will be had as the self-driving fleets adopt platooning technologies, like those from Peloton Technology, allowing trucks to draft behind one another in highway trains.

Great. Now imagine trying to merge onto a highway, only to be cutoff by a long train of trucks blindly following each other, inches apart.

_nickwhite• 10 years ago

Last week, my brother (27) was ran over and killed in a truck stop parking lot by a distracted truck driver. I wholeheartedly embrace the prospect of automating trucks, as a sensor would have prevented this.

pm246019• 10 years ago

First of all I am sorry for your loss. I formed a group within my own city to prevent traffic deaths from happening here.

I agree with you; drivers need more sensors to alert them and stop them from killing people. However, computers can still fail - we need those sensors and maybe automatic brake application to prevent this sort of tragedy - I doubt if we want to trust a computer entirely for this sort of thing.

karmacondon2• 10 years ago

So many comments here are in the form of "People won't trust autonomous vehicles." Well I'm people, and I trust them. And it's for one simple reason: Whatever bugs they have can be fixed for every autonomous car on the road at the same time. That just can't be said for human beings. Every one of us has to learn how to idle icy roads, fog and other hazards individually, with wildly varying results. A computer program does it once, and is constantly getting feedback from the millions of cars on the road all the time.

Sure, people want someone to blame for accidents. And people might not like the idea of cars without drivers, or worry about contrived "Does the car kill the driver or the pedestrian" situations. But at the end of the day, statistics is overwhelmingly on the side of driverless cars. Saying "Yes, but people aren't reasonable enough to see that" isn't helpful. The question is, how quickly can we get people to do what's best after the technology has been perfected?

skywhopper2• 10 years ago

You overstate what data is available. What self-driving cars are currently operating in icy/snowy/rainy conditions on poorly maintained roads that aren't radar-mapped to the inch?

In any case, avoiding hitting people and other cars is the easy part of building self-driving vehicles. Navigating in ever-changing uncertain road conditions reliably is a different problem altogether.

spacemanmatt3• 10 years ago

I think land-pirates will start taking on driverless vehicles when they're common and easy to find. A lot changes when harming a fellow human is no longer on the table.

kailuowang• 10 years ago

Or, even better, Robot land-pirates.

There are many many things out there that you can steal without harming a fellow human now.

When robots are doing all the tedious jobs for humans, you either live for free or work for fun. Not much need for breaking the law (unless that's just fun).

vincefutr23• 10 years ago

Driverless container carriers, traveling at medium speeds across the country, in groups, with only last mile labor required...sounds like, Trains?

0xffff23• 10 years ago

Sure, except that the Interstate + National Highway System alone have more total millage than the US railroad system.

jondiggsit• 10 years ago

Great just what everybody wants. A mile-long platooning heard of driverless trucks doing 45 in the middle lane =P

_pmf_2• 10 years ago

Code generation and Computer Aided Software Engineering is also "coming" and will make the lowly developer and programmer obsolete.

Too bad that the 80 / 20 split does not quite work for things people pay for and rely on.

JabavuAdams• 10 years ago

That's because we're trying to do more. If we were just trying to solve the same old problems as in 1970, then we wouldn't need as many programmers as we have now.

Once trucks can drive autonomously, once it's a solved problem, what more is there to do within that vertical?

mavhc• 10 years ago

"A convoy of self-driving trucks recently drove across Europe and arrived at the Port of Rotterdam"

Except it didn't. They were driven by drivers, only difference was software controlled the speed so they could drive closer together.

https://www.eutruckplatooning.com/News/495554.aspx

marknutter• 10 years ago

Here come the bevy of calls for basic income..

_Codemonkeyism• 10 years ago

+ AI is coming and it's going to automate millions of jobs (lawyers, call center, ...)

ChuckMcM• 10 years ago

This is one of those jobs that I can totally see being automated, and I really worry about being automated. If we automate the long haul truckers out of a job that is going to be a huge dislocation of workers. Further, what is their alternative job prospects? Even with free retraining do we have enough things for them to do?

I'm really interested in disruptive ideas that can soak up lots and lots of human labor at a living wage.

pinaceae• 10 years ago

Why not operate trucks like drones?

Why does the driver need to sit in the vehicle all the time? Have rotating drivers, no need for rest times of the machine enforced by the limitations of the human body operating it.

You can then gradually phase in auto-pilot modes on highways, so that one operator is responsible for multiple vehicles. Already happening in combat drone space.

As they're not transporting passengers it is an easier sell.

Semi-autonomous drones with remote pilots/drivers/captains should change the game in trucking, shipping and freight trains.

37• 10 years ago

I thought driverless trucks were already a thing.

From [1]:

Driverless trucks aren’t new to the resource industry. Mining giants Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton Ltd. use them at many of their operations and oilsands producers see driverless trucks as an obvious way to boost productivity.

I can definitely see it expanding, as automation has a tendency to do, and the idea that no technology will automate away more jobs is certainly interesting.

[1] http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/how-canadas-oi...

jdeibele• 10 years ago

I'm surprised that I never see mention of having one human at the front and a dozen slave trucks driving behind.

The trucks behind could be connected wirelessly. Or they could even use wires. Some sort of machine vision could keep an eye on the truck in front, adjusting distance as necessary.

Obviously that takes coordinating trucks going to the same direction but it seems reasonable to have a hub-and-spoke layout where "trains" are broken apart and re-assembled.

JoeAltmaier• 10 years ago

The Iowa Driving Simulator wrote a lot about that in the last decade. Trouble is, as I see it, that you use trucks precisely when you want to go to a destination uncorrelated with other trucks. Its hard enough to fill even one truck for a trip - that's the hard nut of the industry's problem. Solve that one, multiple trucks would be further down the list.

gkilmain• 10 years ago

I wonder what the net effect will be on truck brokerage? Since "75% of cost is labor" I'm sure revenue will be impacted but not margin.

alex_duf• 10 years ago

I'm starting to think we should tax the value made out of automation.

I feel like it's the only way to redistribute the wealth accumulated by the few actors that will control these giant automated industries.

stale2002• 10 years ago

Let's not kill an industry before it even begins.

ende• 10 years ago

I've always thought trucks should have their own lanes due to very different acceleration and lane changing patterns from other automobiles. I wonder if the emergence of driverless vehicles ends up leading to a separation of driverless and driver roads/lanes. At least early on. It could assuage safety concerns of mixing both modes, and one can imagine efficiency gains from chaining driverless vehicles in 'trains' on their own lane.

beat2• 10 years ago

24 hour trucking is already possible. You just need two drivers. My sister was a 24 hour long haul trucker for a while, running routes from Virginia to Seattle nonstop with a partner driver. They'd work nonstop for three weeks, then take a week or two break, which is actually a pretty good schedule in some ways.

beat2• 10 years ago

When I worked at the Federal Reserve, our vault was managed by autonomous, self-driving vehicles (more robots than trucks - basically smart forklifts). They drove standardized boxes of money around from counting rooms where humans touched the money, to storage where humans were not allowed to go. Warehouse management software knew exactly how much money was in each box. Laser scanning was used for guidance and security.

This was over a decade ago. I'm sure things are much better now.

munificent• 10 years ago

The author proposes building special "slow lanes" for a tightly bound string of trucks in a "peloton" where the trucks do not need to be individually manually driven.

Isn't that a train?

agumonkey• 10 years ago

Musk allegedly talked about automated Buses in Norway not long ago.

cowardlydragon• 10 years ago

You still need security for these trains of trucks.

People can just "security guard" the trucks. Sleep, play video games, whatever.

Get all the benefits of safety, constant movement, better efficiency, maintain SOME of the jobs. Require mechanic training to make it a skilled job, etc.

mahranch• 10 years ago

My father is a truck driver; He says he's not worried. There's too much other stuff to consider before robots replace him. Like the maintenance that needs to be done during the trip. That can't be automated.

This might be good for short one day jaunts, but multiple day trips cross country are another story entirely.

chiph• 10 years ago

This will work, until they realize that the drivers were responsible for doing a pre-trip inspection of the truck and trailer (looking for bad tires, burnt-out lights, worn air-hoses). The warehouse workers aren't going to do this, as their boss is going to be telling them "Just get the thing loaded and don't worry about that."

The result will be increasing accident rates, not only involving the trucks, but also cars near them (when a truck tire blows, the explosion is significant). Russian dash cam footage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTiFClMM0A

The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

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