
Autonomous Shipping Containers – Self-Driving Cars – Medium - edward
https://medium.com/self-driving-cars/autonomous-shipping-containers-a35943fe53a3#.ld4vwngwb
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Animats
Already happening at the more advanced ports.[1] Flat AGVs move containers
around. No drivers. No crane operators. No people at all in the container
area. Trucks of the future may be more like those AGVs than today's trucks -
flat wheeled platforms with no cab.

Fully computer-controlled traffic looks quite different from human-driven
traffic. The coordination is much better.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm_rlLyelQo)

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Already__Taken
Once everything coordinates like that it seems like they could just forget
trying to organize the lanes and make the computer route everything.

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visarga
Maybe autonomous containers could also be capable of transferring cargo to
smaller autonomous delivery cars, then we'd have a full routing delivery
network, that could deliver any package from a point of source to a point of
destination for a low fee.

Next, we'd make automated factories that load materials and unload products by
robot into the autonomous delivery containers. By organizing the factories as
APIs, we could compile a complex product from a series of processes executed
by various factories. It all works out because of the standard
containerization and routing.

To make an analogy to the computer - the transport network is the bus, the
storage warehouses are the memory, and industrial robotics are the CPU. We've
been manually compiling in assembler our products so far, but we could use
higher order languages to define physical products and to share code between
products.

This would make it possible to attempt bootstrapping - a self reproducing
(distributed) automated factory. If it works on renewable energy and common
materials that are found in abundance in nature, it could mean a reduction in
costs of production to zero.

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cstross
> Maybe autonomous containers could also be capable of transferring cargo to
> smaller autonomous delivery cars, then we'd have a full routing delivery
> network, that could deliver any package from a point of source to a point of
> destination for a low fee.

If it's fully automated them it'll need security baked-in by design. And I
mean _security_. Because someone will start thinking in terms of bombs in
boxes with detonators controlled by something like an RPi with a GPS receiver.

An inadequately secured automatic cargo delivery network is an amazing
terrorist enabler (just as long as your hypothetical terrorists include a
couple of tame hackers in their number).

Right now, Amazon will let me send anyone (you included, if I have your
address) a box of live worms, or crickets or even cockroaches. Some gag, if
they're labelled as a gift and you open the box unwarily.) But it has to be
something they've already accepted as stock in their fulfilment centers. A
fulfilment system with no restrictions ... brr!

(I'm not making it up about the roaches: [https://www.amazon.com/Dubia-
Roaches-Feeding-Reptiles-Medium...](https://www.amazon.com/Dubia-Roaches-
Feeding-Reptiles-Medium/dp/B00I15GKT6/) )

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xbmcuser
The op doesn't understand how containers are really used. There is a reason
they are called "shipping" containers most containers spend more time on ships
then on the road so making autonomous containers would waste a lot of
resources for little gain.

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cstross
What the OP missed: highways with traffic jams caused by breakdowns somewhere
in miles-long platoons of self-driving shipping containers that block
entry/exit lanes (because there's no such thing as a perfect drive train, and
cost competition will ensure that the cheapest prevail over the best, and _of
course_ they'll use drafting and drive nose-to-tail to reduce energy costs,
because the failure mode is "only" a breakdown, and the inconvenience and cost
is someone else's problem).

