Autonomous Dump Trucks Are Coming To Canada's Oil Sands

Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 1, 2013 @09:59AM from the let's-teach-the-machines-to-devour-our-planet dept.

Daniel_Stuckey writes "According to a Bloomberg report, Canadian oil sands giant Suncor, which is "Canada's largest energy company by market value," is currently testing haul trucks that are run by computers. Extracting bitumen from sands requires first digging up an enormous amount of the sand itself, with about two tons of sands required to produce one barrel of oil. Digging up all of that sand is the job of huge excavators, which then offload into gigantic haul trucks that transport sands to extraction plants. Time is money, and in this case being faster means carrying as much sand as possible. Haul trucks can carry hundreds of tons at a time, and are in constant motion, moving back and forth between excavator and extraction plant."

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Public Service Annoucemnt by Ralph+Wiggam · 2013-11-01 10:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you drive a vehicle for a living, start training for another job ASAP. This is the tip of the iceberg. I honestly think that in 25 years zero humans will be paid to drive a vehicle.