
Self-driving truck convoy completes its first major journey across Europe - mattiemass
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/7/11383392/self-driving-truck-platooning-europe
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riprowan
It seems evident to me that once these machines prove their value in both
safety and efficiency, the companies that insure trucking firms will
compel/persuade them to switch from human to self-driven vehicles.

These machines can safely convoy closely in one lane leaving other lanes free,
will obey traffic laws and courtesy rules, and never get sleepy.

The disruption of the trucking industry is one that we will have to watch
closely for its likely economic and political effects.

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spdy
Its one step of many imagine we have a fully automated supply chain from
Producer -> Consumer without much human interaction. And it will happen in the
foreseeable future as this is just cost efficient.

Many jobs will disappear without replacement and we have nearly no discussion
in the general public on how to solve this problem.

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RyanZAG
An interesting point: our whole economy is based around the idea that each
person specializes in one thing. Eg, making torches. Then he sells his torches
to a farmer in exchange for some food so that the farmer can work after dark
to make more food. And he sells his torch to a miner so that the miner can go
in deeper tunnels. And so on. Simplified extensively, but at the heart of it,
this is what we do.

So our whole economy is built around this concept of making one thing others
want, and then getting them to give you things you need in exchange. What
happens with automation where a single person can use automation to make
everything he needs without having to barter his work for the work of others?
The entire system - the entire economy - becomes unnecessary.

Is it possible that's where we're rapidly heading and maybe there isn't even a
problem - just a movement to end 'economy' that we've relied on for a few
thousand years?

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morgante
None of the automation that we're seeing is making it possible for one person
to make everything he needs. Automation is increasing the returns to capital
and making it possible for corporations to produce things with fewer
employees—none of that implies that you'll suddenly be able to make things
yourself.

If anything, increasing automation _increases_ the returns to scale. You might
conceivably build your own torch. But you're certainly not going to purchase a
million dollar torch-making machine.

Automation poses a threat to the traditional economic model, but on the supply
side not the demand side—you'll still be buying as much as before, you just
probably won't have a job.

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the_ancient
>>you'll still be buying as much as before, you just probably won't have a
job.

how will one continue to buy at the same level with no income?

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mblode
Maybe a universal basic income for the majority of the population which may
become structurally unemployed caused by automation.

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the_ancient
That would require a change to the current economic model, the comment I
replied to seems to indicate that Automation was not a threat to demand at
all, but if everyone is out of work, demand for non-essential goods will be 0,
no one will want a iphone if they do not have food.

So Automation is a threat to both supply and demand...

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morgante
Sorry, perhaps my comment was unclear.

Automation is not a threat to demand in the sense that people won't stop
demanding products because they are making them at home (as OP ridiculously
claimed). Rather, automation will drastically change the economics on the
supply side.

You're absolutely correct that unless managed well this could lead to mass
poverty (and hence decreasing demand). I'm optimistic we will eventually find
some solutions, either in the form of basic income or higher-order work.

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the_ancient
History would seem to indicate we will go the Way of Elysium not Star Trek....

Most of the world will live in poverty (just like today) and a increasingly
smaller group of humans will live in extreme luxury.

While idea's like UBI would be nice, the point to implement them I believe is
past... They should have been created decades ago. If we wait until 20% or
more of the jobs are replaced by automation, it will be to late for most
people... Poverty will be the future... Poverty is the future for most.

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smarx007
Poverty is actually the reality for many _today_.

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RyanZAG
Poverty is the reality for most people 100 years ago, and for all of history.

It's just in the last few hundred years where we've actually moved people out
of poverty that we've come to the idea that people shouldn't be in poverty.
Before that, it was just assumed that everyone besides the rulers were in
poverty. And if you read stories from the time, there's never any idea that it
could change or that peasants could all be royalty.

Stories from pre-1500 that involve wealth are all generally about an extremely
lucky peasant being married up to royalty, and that was pretty much the only
way to move up from poverty. Well, that or war.

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1024core
The US trucking industry is ripe for disruption. The role of a driver is
minimal as it is: s/he has to just steer the truck along the highway, with
periodic fuel stops. There's nothing preventing an automated system from doing
the same. Self-driving cars may be years away, but self-driving trucks which
automatically attach themselves to trailers, drive 2500 miles and drop them
off, only to do the same in return, 24x7 ? That'll be huge.

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mdorazio
Keep in mind that the role of a modern truck driver covers far more than just
hauling a trailer on the freeway. Drivers also have to navigate city/suburb
streets to an actual end destination (usually a warehouse), work with the
loading dock workers, sign paperwork, etc.

Personally, I think we will see a system where trucks like this do all the
long-distance driving and stop at a drop-off location just outside cities.
Then the role of truck drivers changes to that of delivering cargo the last
mile to the final destination (the part that's much harder to automate). That,
too, will eventually be automated, but not for a while.

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a_imho
You don't need to transport the driver for that, you can have workers residing
in the cities to finish the work. But you still have to pay them, so you gain
nothing at all. We already have quite a few more or less useful driving aids,
I just don't get the obsession of making it fully autonomous. Legislations are
lacking behind tech, ethics problems won't go away either, autonomous trucks
could be prime target for hacking etc.

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mdorazio
I don't understand how it doesn't save money. If the human drivers are only
driving the last few miles and working with loading operations, they can
handle many more trucks in a day than they can currently, so the number of
drivers needed drops quite a bit. Salaries for those drivers might go up, but
not enough to compensate, so the trucking companies stand to benefit.

Let's say a popular shipping route is 300 miles from dock to warehouse, of
which 280 are "easy" open road perfect for automating. For the sake of
example, let's also say it takes half an hour at the loading/unloading point
on either side, the 20 "city miles" take an hour to drive, and the middle 280
miles take 4.5 hours to drive. The total time is then 6.5 hours for a single
truck, all of which is currently human labor.

Now let's say the truck drives itself the middle 280 miles, and the human
driver is handling the rest. Whereas before the human driver would have been
able to handle a single truck in 6.5 hours, the end point operations now only
require 2 hours of driver time per truck, so we've cut the need for 2/3 of our
human driver hours because one driver could handle 3 trucks in the same time
as before. With good scheduling and tracking, that means we've also cut the
need for 2/3 of our human drivers.

Obviously it's more in favor of human drivers for shorter hauls, and more in
favor of self-driving trucks for longer hauls.

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mortona
When you see how crowded European truck stops are you realize that parking a
truck there is probably the ultimate challenge for an autonomous driving
system.

This system might allow two drivers to drive a convoy of maybe six trucks
across a long distance of highway, but it doesn't provide much benefit over
the existing road-trains that they use in Australia - and they've never been
used in Europe.

It's still exciting and amazing though.

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ris
The thing that strikes me about this is less to do with highway safety and
more "how many assets can a company put in the hands of one human to guard?".
It seems like it would be none too difficult for hijackers to box off the tail
end vehicle and slow it to a halt giving them ample time to loot it before the
driver even got a chance to stop the rest of the convoy. The looters could be
gone without even needing to confront the driver.

Worrying.

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hrktb
This would be an arms race between truck companies and looters, with companies
leveling up in security on their trucks.

But in this case I am not sure the problem is so different than with a human
driver. I can't imagine a employee risking to get beaten up/shot just to save
the cargo from a group of robbers for instance.

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ris
I _think_ though that this makes a difference from the criminal's point of
view. Performing the operation without threatening the driver makes it theft
instead of robbery (?), which is significantly less serious from a legal point
of view.

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richardw
I've wondered why rail isn't automated. Trains have accidents but they have a
(mostly) 1D, simple existence. Cars and trucks are mostly 2D, with many more
variables and one-off situations. Fix rail accidents and you get a huge win.

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martinald
A lot of trains are to various degrees. A lot of passenger services are
entirely automatic with a conductor just shutting doors and checking tickets.

Freight trains probably aren't worth automating right now. Trains are huge,
only one guy there, probably useful to have him there anyway if there is a
mechanical fault (vs blocking the line for hours while the nearest person
flys/drives to the train).

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Matt3o12_
What if one car merges infront of one of the following trucks and slows down a
bit? What do these trucks do at construction sites (we have quite A few of
those on German autobahns)?

This technology looks hardly any better then Tesla's lane keeping assistant,
the speed is set by the driver (it doesn't really matter if the speed is set
by the driver in the very first vehicle IMO), and It only handles very simple
roads

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tablewatcher
The lead trunk has indicators that the convoy is platooning, sure some people
with interfere with it but for the most part when drivers start to recognise
this on the road they are mostly going to stay out of the way.

>This technology looks hardly any better then Tesla's lane keeping assistant

So? It's the first step in removing a human driver. Are you assuming that this
technology is not going to ever improve? The end game is a head office
operator that controls a network of 50 trucks across a country remotely. It's
just a matter of time until they get there.

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visarga
In the year 2020 a 12 year old girl could operate a fleet of 50 trucks through
an open source NPM package (orders, planning, monitoring). You'd never suspect
when you see her in person.

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lnrdgmz
Each truck in the platoon needs to be able to drive competently on its own,
right? I don't think one driver can change lanes for an entire platoon, and
each truck will have to adjust its speed to allow for other cars merging in
and out.

If that's the case, why plan to have a driver at all? Just for navigational
purposes?

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Animats
That's a road train. Wait until Road Trains of Australia gets hold of this.

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ProZsolt
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVtd33JEsN0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVtd33JEsN0)

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signa11
i was just wondering about the distance between these vehicles, and if that
really would add up to some amount of finite-non-zero fuel savings as well ?
for example, the lead vehicle just pushes the air away, and the rest following
close by in the "slip-stream" experience less overall air resistance...

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chinathrow
The first video explains that - yes it reduces drag.

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kaonashi
Seems like glorified cruise control.

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dominotw
Agreed. Seems a bit much to call this 'self driving'. Its like calling power
steering, self-driving steering.

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naveen99
If they just put a human in the first truck, then you could just treat the
convoy as a train on the road. Probably safer than a real train.

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shiftoutbox
Totally pointless. I like truck drivers driving trucks . Not out of work angry
and with nothing to do . Ohh and on a sid driverless trucks sound a lot like a
train . Why not just use freight trains ?

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Havoc
>Why not just use freight trains ?

How many kilometers road are there in there world versus kilometers rail?

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shiftoutbox
For example if rail handles long range transport to distribution hubs and
actual truck drivers transport last mile . What's wrong or bad about this idea
? again I don't see the point in wrecking the lives of truck drivers.

