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.

Comments

It doesn't need to be 100% secure

[NotInHere]

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.

Re:It doesn't need to be 100% secure

[tnk1]

I actually agree with you 100% and think that self-driving trucks and autos will make the roads safer, even if they don't make accidents impossible.

When I see this, however, I do wonder what they are thinking about the truck drivers that they are eagerly working at putting out of work. CDL driving isn't a job that I want to do myself, but it is relatively well paying and supports a number of working people who are not exactly STEM material. I hope someone has some idea on that front, or you'll find that you're working on creating even more Donald Trump-type voters.

Re:This could destroy roads in the US

[Teun]

Compare and contrast, for example, the lorries and "heavy trucks" used in the UK and Japan vs. the monstrous beasts on our roads here in the US.

Oh? Over here in Europe(*) a regular heavy truck is depending on the number of axles up to 40 metric tons and in The Netherlands 50 tons, heavier special (not regular) transport needs an easy to get licence.
Road trains go up to 60 tons, in Sweden 80 tons.
Th basis of the legislation is between 10 and 11.5 tons per axle.
(*) Exceptions are the UK and Switzerland with a max. of 38 metric tons.

In the US the maximum weight without additional permit is 80,000 lbs or 36.28 metric tons.