
Waymo Tests Autonomous Trucks in Texas - apsec112
https://www.ttnews.com/articles/waymo-tests-autonomous-trucks-texas
======
benatkin
Curious what the founder of Starsky Robotics is up to. The site is still up
and there's even a blog post after the post about them shutting down:
[https://www.starsky.io/](https://www.starsky.io/)
[https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-poor-roi-of-
aut...](https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-poor-roi-of-
autonomy-f5d6f4f2dd14)

Here's the post entitled "The End of Starsky Robotics"
[https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of-
starsky-...](https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of-starsky-
robotics-acb8a6a8a5f5)

~~~
mikepurvis
That's a terrific post; thanks for linking. It seems like Starsky did
everything right— they focused on a highly safe system for only highway
driving, and an elaborate teleop setup for covering the last mile and
exceptional conditions. Basically they just hit a wall as far as VC timelines
and expectations.

But I wonder if Waymo can basically follow the same playbook and do it long
enough to make it work courtesy of Google's pocketbook.

~~~
stefan8r
CEO of Starsky here. My assumption is that they won't - Waymo has a lot of
inertia around trying to build full autonomy, and it working in a corner of
Phoenix seems to not have convinced that that it's way too hard.

The winner in this space is almost certainly a company that hasn't been
founded yet, doing an updated version of Starsky's approach...which is why
I've been trying to explain Starsky's approach in detail through blogposts.

------
hourislate
The driver is such a small cost in all of this. Contrary to what the media
says, drivers are really not making that much for the amount of time they
spend in the truck and on the road.

It would be good if an autonomous system could be more of a supporting
technology that works with the driver allowing him/her to rest while it takes
over on those long interstate segments of a trip. It would definitely save
time and money for everyone. Best of all you still have the driver to complete
the difficult segments or deal with bad weather and break downs.

~~~
briffle
It's not just the drivers salary, it's finding drivers (up till covid,
trucking companies were getting desperate and jacking up rates here) and the
rules about hours behind the wheel. Self driving trucks don't have drug
testing, physicals, better job offers, and mandatory rest periods

~~~
nradov
The trucking companies were desperate, but apparently not desperate enough to
significantly raise wages or improve working conditions.

~~~
dominotw
uh..not this tangent again.

~~~
snake_plissken
What is "this" tangent again? I might be going off on a tangent here but, I
bet it's this novel idea that companies should raise their compensation when
they have trouble finding people to fill their open positions.

~~~
dominotw
> companies should raise their compensation when they have trouble finding
> people to fill their open positions.

So you are anti H1B ? another tangent :D

~~~
datameta
Another inflammatory strawman comment, not this again...

~~~
dominotw
exactly!

------
KKKKkkkk1
My theory is that the self-driving car industry, similarly to Theranos, at
some point switched from a fake-it-till-you-make-it mode to full blown faking
it. This was either some time around 2016 when Waymo made a video of driving a
blind man around Austin [0] or maybe 2015 when Elon pronounced that self-
driving is a "solved problem." [1]

[0] [https://youtu.be/uHbMt6WDhQ8](https://youtu.be/uHbMt6WDhQ8)

[1] [https://youtu.be/xQhb3C2hQoE?t=3510](https://youtu.be/xQhb3C2hQoE?t=3510)

~~~
mikejb
I think the primary fallacy in the theory is confusing companies like Waymo
with companies like Tesla, and mingling their (in)capabilities.

Both have a very different approach in trying to get to self-driving, and when
combining what both can't do, it would seem nobody can do anything. And whilst
both throw out their fair share of "demo videos" (=advertising), they have
different track records for what they can (and actually do), and what they
can't (but claim to do).

~~~
Dumblydorr
You just named the two companies closest to autonomy, IMO. Waymo has the lead
in actual self driving, Tesla has the lead in actually commercializing
features. I'm confident these two companies will reach mostly autonomous
driving before many of the other fakers.

~~~
mikejb
I named these 2 companies because the parent referenced them in their
argument. But I agree that they are the ones that are the ahead in their
individual approaches, though I think Tesla is not really that near to
autonomous driving. They have a lot of features in development that their test
drivers (=consumers) are using, and that gives the impression that they got
that already (Elon even claimed Tesla has FSD on highways in early 2019), but
the step to "the driver doesn't always have to pay attention" is gigantic and
far away - and on that scale, Tesla's lead to other manufacturers (who don't
do that kind of marketing or testing on consumers) is relatively small.

They're still doing better than a lot of the wannabe-unicorns that pursue
self-driving or Lidar though.

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Animats
California's DMV won't let autonomous vehicles over 10,000 lbs. on the road
with just a testing permit. CA's testing permit for autonomous vehicles is
much like a learner's permit - no passengers for hire, no heavy vehicles.
Which makes sense.

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anitil
If you're interested in trucking, the podcast 'Over The Road' is worth a
listen. The host Long-Haul Paul has a voice to die for, and the oncoming
change to autonomous trucks plays a part in some episodes. I think there's 12
or so episodes in total

[https://www.overtheroad.fm/](https://www.overtheroad.fm/)

------
anticensor
I never expected that Google would enter trucking business.

~~~
onion2k
It's a multi-billion dollar market that they could, potentially, completely
dominate using a technology solution. That's _exactly_ the industry Google
goes after.

------
kleiba
Would you like to be the last car in a high way traffic jam when you see one
of these coming closer in your rear view mirror?

~~~
mikejb
Lidar-based systems are pretty good at detecting stationary objects. Humans on
the other hand crash into traffic jams pretty regularly.

So in that situation I'd prefer that to be an automated truck.

~~~
kleiba
[https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relativ...](https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relative-
Privation)

------
SrslyJosh
I'm expecting to see waymo autonomous vehicle fatalities in the near future!

~~~
derwiki
You can have fatalities and still have several orders of magnitude fewer
fatalities than non-AV.

~~~
itsoktocry
This is true, but ignores two things:

1\. People will (over)react to autonomous deaths. Every AV death "matters"
more.

2\. Getting the death rate below non-AV is difficult to test. Accidents are
_rare_. Are you going to let these things loose on the public for hundreds of
millions of miles before determining that the death rate might not be better
yet?

~~~
ghaff
1\. And any accident of a properly-used/maintained vehicle will be viewed as
some company's fault because of design/software flaw.

2\. There will doubtless be accidents that will be quite different from the
sorts of accidents humans have. And those will be viewed as proof that these
cars aren't safe.

