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A Fleet of Trucks Just Drove Themselves Across Europe (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on Quartz: About a dozen trucks from major manufacturers like Volvo and Daimler just completed a week of largely autonomous driving across Europe, the first such major exercise on the continent. The trucks set off from their bases in three European countries and completed their journeys in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. One set of trucks, made by the Volkswagen subsidiary Scania, traveled more than 2,000 km and crossed four borders to get there. The trucks were taking part in the European Truck Platooning Challenge, organized by the Dutch government as one of the big events for its 2016 presidency of the European Union. While self-driving cars from Google or Ford get most of the credit for capturing the public imagination, commercial uses for autonomous or nearly autonomous vehicles, like tractors from John Deere, have been quietly putting the concept to work in a business setting.In related news, as tipped to us by a reader, "Swedish automaker Volvo is planning on bringing a fleet of 100 self-driving vehicles to China from next year, in a project which will see local drivers test autonomous cars on public roads in everyday driving conditions. Dangerous driving and congestion in Chinese cities will likely prove a difficult challenge for the fleet." I am particularly interested in learning how this autonomous truck is controlled. From the article, it appears that these vehicles utilize Wi-Fi. Based on so many security incidents we continue to come across, perhaps these companies should first work on solving the technical challenges to make these trucks safe -- that is, bolstering the hardware and software security.
Being more secure than humans is enough. And that can be easily measured, in the number of accidents that the cars caused.
Traffic accounts for far more deaths than plane travel, still the media attention after plane accidents is much higher. Its good that now the roads are made safer as well.
until cars have a midlife crisis and drive across the country randomly to "find themselves"?
The EU has a lot to cover the displaced workers in the usa they may need to turn to the jail / prison if they need a doctor.
Of how AI research and engineering has been a "Failed approach" that is leading us nowhere.
Looking at you Narcc!
But yes, AI research has lead to nothing useful.. you are right. /ExtremeSarcasm
Anything under a 6 digit income in the US and this is a very real consideration.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
In the US, trucking is already heavily subsidized. The government spends far more money on roads than it takes in supposed use (fuel) taxes, and trucks are far more efficient per pound than cars meaning the major beneficiary are trucks. Add to that higher speeds than many trains (and more flexible schedules), and the ability to run all night, and you have a recipe for disaster: huge amounts of freight currently carried by train will end up on the roads, bankrupting the railroad industry AND the causing massive chaos on the roads and expenditures on roads going through the roof.
The question, I guess, is whether Congress (and the States) is willing to address fuel tax reform before this can happen? (And at the same time, are States willing to address the silliness of property taxes on railroads given the existence of a private railroad network saves them money.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"Volvo is planning on bringing a fleet of 100 self-driving vehicles to China from next year,"
Forget self-driving vehicles. Tell us more about this time travel technology!
I'm very surprised there hasn't been a movie yet (that I'm aware of) featuring an autonomous vehicle being hijacked remotely to do some dastardly deed.
Other than China, they also might want to try driving the vehicles through Cairo. I remember taking a taxi once from the area of the zoo to a hotel near Giza once and the number of near accidents, crazy driving, etc. in that 20 minute trip was greater than everything I've seen in every other country I've ever visited put together over the span of my entire lifetime (40+ years).
They just sent a bunch of gamers an early beta of "EuroTruck Simulator 3" which was actually just a thinly veiled tele-operation console for these trucks.
Ah, breaker one-nine, this here's the Rubber Duck v1.0. You gotta copy on me, Pig Pen v1.1, c'mon?
Ah, yeah, 10-4, Pig Pen v1.1, fer shure, fer shure. By golly, it's clean clear to Flag Town, c'mon.
Yeah, that's a big 10-4 there, Pig Pen v1.1, yeah, we definitely got the front door, good buddy. Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us an autonomous convoy!
Going from "largely autonomous" to "fully autonomous" is probably tougher than going from nothing to "largely autonomous."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The high unemployment rate through out the EU shows otherwise.
And that's without those outside the statistics thanks to the "socialist" politics the EU is mistakenly referred/advertised as but, reality is full of hypocrisy and other devils that are put in place to deliberately hide the real unemployment percentage.
A map I saw last year (actually a slide show through a few decades) showed the current most common occupation in ~45 US states: Truck Driver.
Depressing enough to think that's what's left of the US nowadays, but what the hell happens in the next 5 to 10 years as even those jobs are eliminated (all the while told by the Puritan ruling class we're bums if not employed)?
But was Van Damme doing splits between them the whole time?
Driverless trucks will be great for China. They've been dying for something to fix their labor shortage.
When autonomous vehicles have tens of millions of miles on the clock, WITHOUT a human in the cab "just in case", then I'll take them more seriously.
Did they have any "refugees" hiding in the back?
Do you have ESP?
just to clarify: those self-driving truck were just following the truck in front of them at rather close distance, about 10m. The first truck in those so-called platoons was manually driven, the second, and possibly third and fourth follower however was following on autopilot - they had drivers, but they were not doing anything while on the highway. While this is a vastly simplified problem to solve, the economic potential is interesting, especially if they succeed in getting the time spend by the driver in the following truck accounted as "pause time" and "regeneration/sleep" - that would basically allow a platoon of 3-4 trucks to drive nonstop with only 1 driver per truck, no standing breaks required any more.
I'm waiting for my autonomous RV. Now is the time to invest in RV parks and KOA. Who needs a house when I can live in a new city every month.
The high unemployment rate through out the EU
Unemployment varies wildly within the EU.
The technique demonstrated here is platooning, where trucks can autonomously follow the truck in front of them. The truck at the front of the line is still driven manually.
An interesting development, but not quite autonomous driving.
The question that remains is how they'd prevent the convoy being broken up at traffic lights.
I saw this from my window at work today. Actually I spent more time staring at the helicopter than the trucks but I digress.
The irony does not go unnoticed that in the video that they park these "eco twin" trucks promoting fuel efficiency and environmental savings right in front of the brand spanking new coal fired power station commissioned only this year at the Maasvlakte.
I can't help but wonder if todays event was the reason that the station wasn't running and belching its usual big cloud.
I built a self sufficient, solar powered off grid farm with 100m^2 luxury house and over 16 hectares of land over the period of the last eight years and under $50,000 cash. I started out living in a tent and was a lot of work, but it comes out to ~$7,000 year investment. That works out to $3.50/hour based on a 2,000hour work year. The rest of the world can melt down or flood or whatever and I should be fine.
I commend you but I warn that if the Government doesn't or didn't tax it chances are what you have will be declared illegal, robbed from you and sold to the highest bidder for a new development.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
if the truck still belches out toxic nano particles in it's exhaust and uses compression release engine brakes at 4 am that are so loud you can hear them from over 2 kilometres away. i.e. So what, this does not fix the existing problems with trucks and just causes one more problem, unemployment.
So you can have a truck that will drive itself to the moon and back, but how do you address certain situations such as inclement weather and mechanical safety? Someone needs to be there to install the chains when the roads get slick. Someone needs to inspect the brakes before heading down a steep incline. Perhaps the load has shifted, and needs straps tightened? Blown tire needs changing? Brake caliper stuck closed? A truck driver isn't just a meatbag that steers the truck and hits the gas and brakes. Even if you completely automate the trucks and eliminate the driver, you're still going to need a human being as a tender to keep those machines moving safely and running well. Out here in the western half of the US, there's some looooong stretches of open road, and an autonomous truck stranded out there hours from help is not good for the bottom line.
This "News for Nerds" site just joined the clickbait "Race to the Bottom"!
They drove across Europe - What happened next made readers cry!
Want to drive away serious readers and longtime Slashdotters? Keep making /. look like every other social media feed. Dumb everything down as much as possible.
(Yes, I know TFA had "just" in the headline. Doesn't make it right.)
Sure they will. In the "you get to unload this yourself" category, there's nothing technological to stop it. In the "we'll unload this for you", other types of automation will be employed, so that's perhaps a couple or three years down the road, so to speak, but nonetheless, inevitable.
Better start voting for people who know what a social safety net is and are willing to fight for same. Because every vote for those who want to dismantle that will make this transition (and the many others like it coming down the pike) generally harder at the society level, and at the worker level, outright disastrous. Retraining and reemploying all the people who are going to be out of a job isn't even remotely practical.
If you can even vaguely understand the points I just made, Sanders is who you want for president. Then you want to elect similar congresscritters, etc.
If you can't... well, being a Republican or large-L libertarian won't get you lynched. Yet.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Kinda like this
If you keep the whip in the middle of their backs, they generally drive pretty straight until they're just too tired. Then they fall over. Same as other forms of cattle. Just ask Fox News.
No, no need to thank me, delighted to enlighten you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Automated refueling tech
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The video kind of glosses over it, but the trucks still have drivers. However, each truck has automation that allows them to follow each other more closely, saving fuel, and steer and brake automatically.
I'm hoping that Jean Claude van Damme was doing the splits between 2 of the trucks for the whole journey..
Google "Volvo van damme" for the video,
And am full of bull shit but I bet sooner or later no farmer needed to grow food.
Rough breakdown is $6k solar (2.5kw), $2k slab foundation, $12k house material (wood/roofing), $5k septic. I found a lot of material like windows and doors on craigslist and also talking to people at building construction sites where I picked up their garbage/leftovers. It has taken me over 7 years from my first nights in a tent, but I quickly found a free trashed rv after that. Solar is only half price now from what I originally paid in 2008, but compared @$0.5kwh fuel for the generator, it has paid for itself.
I share a well with a neighbor but have quotes for ~$12k to drill a new hole @330' (same depth as theirs). I seriously doubt anyone would be interested in developing the area. There are a few big mansions being built around me, mostly by people from California, but most don't stay for long and move out after a couple of years. It's very boring out here unless you are self entertaining. Most people aren't.
If you don't feel like doing work yourself, you can always find old abandoned houses around ghost towns with acreage. I haven't looked into that much, but did look at a few complete turnkey farms in small towns in OH and MI a few years ago in the $80k range.
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You know when that is useful, exactly when that is useful, when 7 billion people can do it. Earth is 51.01 billion hectares, of which 3.107 billion hectares is arable so as we would need 112 billion hectares, we do you suggest we find the other 36 earths so we can all live like you, or do you suggest we simple eliminate sufficient people to end up with 1 36th of the number of people we have now. If you seriously think when the rest of the earth's ability to sustain the current population diminishes, you'll be safe, you have quite a few screws loose. The only way to be relatively safe as a human is to be part of a sound, properly functioning society, everything else exposes to far higher risk, whether it be random infection, insect bite or even a random fall, all of them can see you dead, quite quickly without the assistance of the rest of society.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It is fully permitted.
The only place I see this flying is in Alaska. Otherwise local citizenry or local government would be raiding your home and burning it down. What state did you pull this miracle off in?
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
So they get jammed every time they go around an expensive hotel?
Property taxes, right?
Not too found of them on residential houses since a loss of income can ruin someone's life.
I first heard of the concept whilst participating in the first DARPA Grand Challenge.
what I'd actually be interested in buying is an autonomous lawn mower. Ball's in your court John Deere.
Huh? My friend just finished building a house in "overregulated" California, in a crowded suburb of the bay area. He did full permits on everything, and some items such as the foundation were done by professional crews. The vast majority of the work was done by amateurs using scrounged materials. It's a small house but it cost around $50k to make in an area where you can't find a shitty condo for $300k.
I think you can pull this off most anywhere. Some cities are more uptight than others, but as long as you meet code and pull permits and don't be a dick to the inspectors you will have smooth sailing.
Man, you really need that seminar!