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Daimler Tests a Self-Driving Truck On the Autobahn
Engadget reports that Daimler has tested an autonomous truck in one environment guaranteed to put stress on any car: the German Autobahn. While the Mercedes Actros truck was guided with a mix of "radar, a stereo camera array and off-the-shelf systems like adaptive cruise control," there was a human crew on hand, too, just in case. From the article: This doesn't mean you'll see fleets of robotic trucks in the near future. Daimler had to get permission for this run, and the law (whether European or otherwise) still isn't equipped to permit regular autonomous driving of any sort, let alone for giant cargo haulers. Still, this could make a better case for approving some form of self-driving transportation.
The article's a bit short on details, but this is where I expect autonomous driving to take off first--long-haul trucking. Controlled-access highways present fewer complications like pedestrians, four-way stops, and the like, and I imagine automating that would take care of 80% of the driving. Even if you still needed a human driver to reel 'er in at the warehouse gates or even the city limits, it still strikes me as a huge improvement.
Laws and liability are going to be the biggest limiting factor to commercial deployment, especially if they boil down to "a human must be ready to intervene at any time," but I think there are fudges around that. You could have one human operator in a remote control center "driving" multiple trucks, kind of like a cross between drone pilot and remote ICU monitoring.
Not that even a human sitting in the seat with hands on the wheel would be likely to intervene effectively should something go wrong after eight hours of idle monotony. But, having a human somewhere supervising in some capacity would soothe the more irrational fears that also serve as part of the reason we still keep human pilots flying planes, while still yielding the benefits that come with automation--self-driving trucks are much less compelling if each one still needs a full-time human driver to comply with laws.
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People on the autobahn are generally courteous, signal when changing lanes and so on. I guess you'd have to be at such speeds, but it's also part of the German national character. Furthermore, it's a highway so everyone is driving fast and the velocity differences, which cause most of the danger, are actually rather low most of the time. I think the highway may possibly be the safest and easiest environment for automated driving.
It's not a substitute, it's a complement.
A truck goes exactly where you need it to go, not some hub somewhere where you have to send it out by truck for 100 more miles anyway... You simply cannot do that with trains.
Even though freight trains will still be around because of massive hauling capacity, you would STILL need a robust trucking infrastructure just to handle the "last few hundred miles" needs.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
German self driving tanks sound like more fun. Maybe some armored drones and, and LASERS!!!!!!
Think about it. One tractor trailer driver can easily be paid 60K per year and he must get food and shelter allowances as well. The law limits his hours in the cab so unless he is breaking the law that truck will sit still at least 12 hours a day. On the other hand a machine driving the truck requires zero rest so that truck can keep rolling 24/7 with brief stops for fueling. That means operation of a truck will be reduced in cost by 60% or greater. Further the customers will get much faster delivery of their orders. Trucking companies will want this like you won't believe. Taxis will also be automated and we will probably see Uber cars automated as well. The cost of owning such a vehicle will be far lower as the vehicle can stay in constant use. So you own the vehicle and it is out earning you money every minute you are not in your car. This means that we can reduce the actual number of cars on the road vastly. Further your automated car can drop your kids off at school and then go to the grocery store and have it loaded by the bag boy and the car brings your order home. Amazon is about to start a delivery service such that products from any store can be delivered to your home. One side effect is that hundreds of thousands of jobs are about to vanish because of this technology.
one environment guaranteed to put stress on any car: the German Autobahn
Uh, no?
Have you ever actually driven on the German Autobahn? It is probably the most simple environment for an autonomous car, because absolutely everything is very clearly defined and built to standards. You have very reliable road quality, width, signaling. No traffic lights, roundabouts or intersections. Very few traffic rules (basically speed limit and whether or not trucks are allowed to overtake on this stretch). Construction sites are about the only tricky spots you will ever encounter. Even incoming and exiting traffic is very simple to handle, because there is one and only one way in which it will ever happen.
If I were to write autonomous driving software, I would start with the Autobahn, and then go to more complicated road systems later.
For trucks, even speed is trivial. The general high speed of trucks is 80 km/h, so if you are a truck you stay on the right lane and stick to that speed and that's it.
Left-lane driving on the Autobahn is more interesting, especially for foreigners (you think you're going crazy fast in your rental car at 190 km/h (about 120 mph), and there's this BMW behind you signaling to get your slow ass out of the way). But we're talking about trucks here.
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