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:It doesn't need to be 100% secure

[lgw]

If you're making more than a subsistance living driving trucks in the US, you're either doing something else besides driving, or you own the truck.

Some truck drivers are delivery drivers. They won't be replaced with self-driving trucks (though they might by delivery drones or whatever).

Some truck drivers are driving construction-related trucks. There's a lot more to operating a cement mixer or even dump truck than just rolling down the highway. Plus, autonomous driving on a construction site isn't a problem people are even thinking about yet (once you're on the site, where you actually go changes all the time).

And if you own something as capital-intensive as a big rig, whether you drive it or not you can still make money from providing haulage.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

>To do otherwise is sheer madness and inviting disaster.

Goddamn luddite. A computer doesn't get tired, a computer doesn't need to take no-doze to make that time sensitive delivery. A computer doesn't speed so it can get home to its family faster. A might misjudge the grip it has on a wet road, but it won't willingly risk wiping out a bunch of other drivers in the wet because it wants to get somewhere faster. A computer takes inputs, makes predictions, and operates on those outcomes. Exactly the same as a human, but the computer can be biased towards safety whereas the human is biased towards whatever immediate reward they are seeking, and no amount of legislation or policing will stop that.

The most dangerous element of driving is the human element. That is exactly what we're seeking to remove.

How long

[Anonymous Coward]

until cars have a midlife crisis and drive across the country randomly to "find themselves"?

The Future is Now

[jasenj1]

"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!

Movie Plot

[irrational_design]

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).

Convoy!!!

[scubamage]

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!

largely autonomous

[phantomfive]

Going from "largely autonomous" to "fully autonomous" is probably tougher than going from nothing to "largely autonomous."

A map I saw last year

[ThatsNotPudding]

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)?

Re:This could destroy roads in the US

[Dutch Gun]

Trying to pre-emptively legislate based on speculation or predictions seems like a really bad idea. Let's address issues as they arrive. It's not like this is going to happen overnight.

Anyhow, to your point... railroads and trucking are rather different in their advantages and disadvantages, and so I suspect there may be less competition among these industries than you believe. Trucks will *never* match the efficiency per-pound of bulk goods carried by rail. However, rail can never match the speed and flexibility of trucks to make smaller point-to-point deliveries.

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.