
Uber-owned Otto to offer freight hauling services using autonomous trucks - doppp
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/27/uber-otto-freight-services-2017/
======
slv77
Confession time...

I really want to see fully autonomous vehicles but I don't really believe
we'll see them on the road in the next 50 years. I think Google's concerns
with being able to reliably pass control between the driver and the computer
is warranted. I think that the technology will get stuck in the equivalent of
the CGI uncanny valley where they find that the technology has to leave more
control with the driver than its capable of to keep the driver engaged but
never is capable of full control.

My guess is that these systems will evolve into assisted driving technologies
that will use force feedback to the driver that will suggest the sanest path
but won't take full control until the driver is outside the envelope and will
predominantly be used to extend the window where baby boomers can drive and
also save inattentive and unsafe drivers for themselves. In other words a
drunk behind the wheel is still going to look like a drunk behind the wheel
but just less likely to kill someone.

I expect the technology will be displace drivers in military convoys but I
don't think it will be good enough for general use. Even if the technology is
close I don't think the safety will be as good as the "augmented human" model
which will also rapidly improve and so insurance and regulation will continue
to hamper rollout.

Would love from those in the know to tell me I'm wrong. I want to believe!

~~~
jhall1468
> Even if the technology is close I don't think the safety will be as good as
> the "augmented human" model

Except allowing humans control is, by definition, less safe. Google's self-
driving cars have had a total of 1 partially at-fault accident after 1.5
million miles of driving. While their accident rate is about the same as the
average driver, what isn't the same is that humans caused all but 1 of the 17
accidents the cars have been involved in.

The software is well under 50 years out.

~~~
saosebastiao
Google has been testing their cars in conditions that are more ideal for
existing technology than the vast majority of the world has to offer, and they
do it in a way that avoids directly relying on computers for handling edge
cases that normal drivers can't avoid. Their progress is impressive, but it's
nowhere close to being able to handle major inclement weather, bad roads,
obstructions, detours, and experimental traffic calming or control measures.
Graduating from college takes 16 times longer than it does to graduate from
kindergarten...it won't be any different here.

~~~
Animats
No, not really. Watch Chris Urmson's talk at SXSW. See their vehicle faced
with someone in a powered wheelchair chasing a chicken with a broom. See the
system recognize construction crews directing traffic.

~~~
saosebastiao
I would be careful to extrapolate their capabilities from that. Nobody is
going to talk about the edge cases that they don't handle, but they will talk
about the ones they do. It is a pretty safe assumption that anything they
can't demonstrate publicly is something they can't currently handle. In other
words, if they didn't show the car driving in the snow, it's pretty safe to
assume it can't.

And even for the examples they did show, it would be more interesting to know
the rate at which they handle them successfully. So sure, they handled the guy
with the reflective vest and a huge ass sign directing traffic that one
time...will they do it the next time? Will they handle the case where the
construction crews aren't doing everything the way they should?

~~~
Animats
The edge cases they don't handle show up in their DMV accident reports. Google
has been very upfront about their sideswipe by a bus. They mis-predicted what
the bus driver would do.

~~~
saosebastiao
The edge cases that they don't handle don't really show up in their accident
reports, because they avoid testing them publicly until they have a reasonable
chance at success at succeeding in controlled environments. The stuff you see
showing up in accident reports are their Release Candidate bugs, not their
Alpha bugs.

~~~
enraged_camel
I think the main point is not that the system can handle all edge cases, but
that it can handle more edge cases more reliably than humans can at the
aggregate level. _That_ is what really matters. A computer never gets drunk,
tired, sleepy, sick, etc.

Furthermore, when autonomous vehicles become common, human drivers will also
end up in fewer accidents because they won't have to worry about the
unpredictable behaviors of other human drivers (such as suddenly changing
lanes without signaling).

Edge cases are important, but at the end of the day, they're just that: edge
cases. By definition, they will be very rare.

~~~
saosebastiao
_How_ they handle them is far more important than if they handle them. Human
drivers aren't exactly great at handling edge cases either, but they certainly
handle them better than the computers do at the moment and for the near
future. Existing technology is by far better at the non-edge cases, but
nowhere enough to make up for how bad they are at edge cases. They have better
reaction times for people crossing the street, but throw some snow at it and
it'll drive off a cliff.

I'm sure they've got some reasonably safe behavior for when it doesn't know
what to do (do nothing!), but that doesn't exactly make for a great
transportation device. Staying home is safer than that and just as effective
at not getting you anywhere.

And while edge cases are by definition rare, how rare are they? I'd be willing
to estimate that when I drove trucks for a living, I'd handle upwards of 100
scenarios _per day_ that were not "by the books". Remember that 99.9% of
uptime still means you are having downtime 1.5 minutes a day. If they are
really bad at handling the edge cases at the 0.1% level of rarity, that's
still enough of a chance to fuck up at least once a day.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>Human drivers aren't exactly great at handling edge cases either, but they
certainly handle them better than the computers do at the moment and for the
near future.

Citation needed.

~~~
saosebastiao
[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/robotics-lab-uber-gutted-
sa...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/robotics-lab-uber-gutted-says-driving-
cars-are-not-even-close-carnegie-mellon-nrec)

------
seibelj
I'm a regular Boston driver that enjoys driving here. On any average 15 minute
drive, you will see numerous examples of cars, pedestrians, and cyclists
breaking laws in sometimes shocking and life threatening ways. The drivers are
also extremely smart and competitive, looking for any edge they can to get
where they are going faster.

If self driving cars start driving here in large numbers, they are going to be
the most slow, weak, taken-advantage-of cars on the road. If tailgating a self
driving car makes it pull over, everyone on the road will do it. If a honk
makes it pull over, everyone on the road will do it. You just can't understand
the mindset of drivers here until you experience it.

This is just Boston, but wait until forums, youtube, etc. of people trading
tips on how to fuck with the people sleeping in their cars spring up. In a
tech utopia where everyone has a self-driving car and human operators are
banned, maybe it can work. But in the real world, where not everyone is a
college educated rich HN user, self driving cars are going to require a very
difficult-to-accomplish change in behavior to succeed.

~~~
throwaway729
_> tailgating a self driving car makes it pull over, everyone on the road will
do it. If a honk makes it pull over, everyone on the road will do it. _

Tailgating is illegal in most of the US. Same for non-emergency honking.

Those laws are never enforced, of course, which I think is a shame. Especially
non-emergency honking, and especially in cities.

Hopefully assholes exploiting the conservative driving behavior of autonomous
vehicles will lead to law enforcement regularly enforcing these sorts of
safety&civility laws.

 _> where not everyone is a college educated rich HN user_

Anecdotally, I haven't noticed that dangerous and aggressive driving is
strongly associated with education level or income. I pretty regularly
encounter dangerous assholes with "university of blah" stickers on their car.

~~~
ben_jones
Have you ever driven on a busy road way before? Police cannot, and arguably
should not have the ability to, monitor drivers 100% of the time. For the most
part they are forced to resort to what can be considered scare tactics just to
place the idea in driver's heads that they might be caught.

The idea that doubling, tripling, quadrupling, or whatever is necessary,
police activity will enable autonomous drivers is absurd.

~~~
throwaway729
_> Have you ever driven on a busy road way before?_

Yes, on a regular basis.

Have you ever tried reporting a dangerous or aggressive driver to the police?

 _> Police cannot, and arguably should not have the ability to, monitor
drivers 100% of the time_

They should, and ability is only a matter of time.

There is no right to being an asshole in a large, loud, dangerous machine.

 _> For the most part they are forced to resort to what can be considered
scare tactics just to place the idea in driver's heads that they might be
caught._

For the most part, they do _nothing at all_.

 _> The idea that doubling, tripling, quadrupling, or whatever is necessary,
police activity will enable autonomous drivers is absurd._

You don't need to increase police activity _at all_. Police just need to
_care_ and process evidence provided by autonomous vehicle companies (or,
hell, by citizens).

~~~
hx87
> You don't need to increase police activity at all. Police just need to care
> and process evidence provided by autonomous vehicle companies (or, hell, by
> citizens).

We can give them (especially the rural and small-town ones) one hell of an
incentive by banning speed limit enforcement, or at least confiscating all
revenue from speeding tickets, while leaving enforcement of other infractions
unencumbered.

------
Aloha
I'm a former truck driver.

The future of long haul trucking is not automated trucks - its the rail. As it
is now, a majority of long haul freight goes piggyback on a train. The only
thing that goes on a truck end to end, is stuff that is more expedited than
the train can deal with (or where it misses the window), and freight traveling
under a certain distance (where the extra day to get in an out of the rail
yard pushes it out of time). It's easy to automate the long haul portion of
the journey, not so much the bumping the dock portion.

~~~
bduerst
Warren Buffet agrees with you [1], even though I think Otto is trying to
automate the rail-to-warehouse segment, not long distance trucking. Kind of
like "last-mile" for freight.

[1]
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-10/buffetts-1...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-10/buffetts-15-billion-
from-bnsf-show-railroad-came-cheap)

~~~
Aloha
I personally see very limited returns in automating the last mile - local
drivers often only make 15-25 dollars an hour, and often its drop and hook
(drop one trailer, pick up another) to maximize tractor utilization. In
addition, the hours of service rules for intra-state drivers are often much
more generous than the federal standard.

In short, it makes sense to spend alot of money to eliminate the big cost -
but not to eliminate the little cost.

~~~
dmix
> local drivers only make 15-25/hr

Really? I thought Teamster unions made that cost higher. My father made much
more than that in the early 90s when he drove a truck temporarily for a
salary. Unless local drivers aren't unionized?

The average salary for private drivers is much higher:

>> The median annual wage for a trucker that works for a private fleet, such
as a truck driver employed by Walmart, is $73,000, according to ATA. The Labor
Department pegs the median annual salary for all truck drivers at around
$40,000. But it isn't an easy job to fill. There's 1.6 million truck drivers
in America. Oct 9, 2015 [0]

Also long-haul trucking _is_ the real goal of Otto [1] not just last-mile. The
benefits go well beyond just replacing the driver's salary w/ robots. For
example, an automated truck fleet could be heavily optimized by algorithms to
take optimal routes, utilize time better, work for multiple warehouses at once
by operating as a 'floating' fleet instead of with fixed routes (this is
happening already with human drivers, but it's a natural extension of
automating the vehicles and would make implementation/optimization far
easier). Plus speeds could eventually be increased, less accidents, less
breaks (washrooms, food, etc), less human management required, zero turnover,
no training, no hiring, etc, etc.

[0] [http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/09/news/economy/truck-driver-
sh...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/09/news/economy/truck-driver-shortage/)

[1] [http://fortune.com/2016/09/28/uber-otto-long-haul-
trucking/](http://fortune.com/2016/09/28/uber-otto-long-haul-trucking/)

~~~
Aloha
AFAIK There are no national union TL (Truckload) Carriers remaining (I believe
CF was the last one), the LTL guys (Yellow, Overnite (now UPS) are often, but
not always union.

Private fleet is FWIW a very very different ballgame - Walmart is considered
by drivers "best in the industry" to work for - you need IIRC 5 years of
driving experience before they'll even look at you.

Most TL drivers do not drive a dedicated route, and operate as a 'floating'
fleet - even if you're on a dedicated board, while you might be hauling one
customers crap - you're still likely to go to different places every time.
Though as a non-dedicated driver, working out of the terminal I was out of, I
regularly hauled Gatorade to Phoenix, or Coke to Phoenix, or Sports Authority
to the Pacific Northwest. An example week for me was leave out of LA with
Sports Authority (from Ontario area, CA) head up to Seattle then return with
rolled paper out of Tacoma, or Coastal Oregon.

All of this freight was stuff that needed to move faster than the rail could
take it, or where the destination was too far from a railhead, or the run was
too short for the rail - or where simply, the company had the business from
the customer and it could choose to route it via the railyard or via a truck,
and it had an idle truck that needed to move to someplace else so it could
haul freight from there.

While I do see a labor savings in automated driving - I dont see it as
practical for most drivers - the biggest advantage I see is with expedited
team drivers - you could replace one member of the team with the automation,
and save some labor from the truck. So long as the automation is driving the
open road portions especially at night, that could work out as a win win - you
still need a driver to fuel the thing, check tires, open the trailer doors,
etc - but perhaps the easier portion of the driving could be handled by the
computer.

------
Animats
Well, Otto is Anthony Lewandowski, who is very good. He did the self-driving,
self-balancing motorcycle for the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge while an
undergrad at UC Berkeley. I met him back then. At least it's not the Cruise
crowd.

~~~
dmix
Indeed, it seems they have some real talent, excellent financing, and
political backing here to really accomplish something. Or at least make a
strong go at make pioneering efforts to commercialize this.

HN's usual negativity generating machine is in full force in this thread. It's
sad because we should be supportive of bold companies making difficult plays.
But it seems we're all in a race to reward people who can most effectively
dismiss the ideas as not possible.

Yet people constantly criticize Silicon Valley as not investing in bold ideas
anymore and instead obsessing over the next photo sharing emoticon apps. You
can't wonder why VC/angels are hesitant to capitalize entrepreneurs taking
real risks when this is the public reception they get - especially from a site
full of technical people and entrepreneurs.

The more money the startup has the more the hyper-critical audience shows up
to show the world how much smarter they are then these guys. People who
actually went out in the world, built something, and got $640m to implement
the idea - and haven't even yet made public releases/test available that can
be analyzed and fairly criticized. But that doesn't seem to stop anyone.

~~~
serge2k
> It's sad because we should be supportive of bold companies making difficult
> plays

It's not wrong to ask questions in general, although you can avoid a negative
tone.

This is a special case though. They make mistakes here and people will die.
Asking questions and pointing out every issue is, at some point, necessary.

~~~
dmix
> They make mistakes here and people will die.

The same problem exists for every person who enters a vehicle. That very same
risk is why there is an economic incentive to do this in the first place. If
they succeed far fewer people will die. And it will drive down the costs of
commerce improving the quality of life for everyone.

So I take issue when the default perspective is pessimism and dismissiveness.
This site is so hostile to founders who aren't doing totally safe projects or
_gasp_ those who get millions of dollars without publicly launched products.

Maybe this is just a self-selecting audience of bored pessimistic people who
have time to spend commenting on their vague notions of other peoples projects
on HN while the optimistic bunch is too busy building their own interesting
stuff.

I find Otto a particularly interesting case because they've been pretty quiet
with the contents of their tech, so we have very little idea of what they have
accomplished yet other than partnering with Volvo and having lots of $$ in the
bank. But I'm sure most people here would be fine commenting dismissively just
off the headlines they read without really knowing any specific details of the
project or the people behind it.

~~~
potatolicious
> _" while the optimistic bunch is too busy building their own interesting
> stuff."_

I am also dismayed by the general pessimism in this thread, though I think
there is a third (and IMO most likely scenario):

Anyone who has actual direct, inside knowledge of this field will not write
publicly about it for a litany of incredibly obvious competition/secrecy
reasons. The people most qualified to speak on these matters are staying
silent.

------
mabbo
They have the right plan: autonomation, leading towards automation, rather
than automation from day 1.

First, reduce the work for the human. Then, continually improve it until they
aren't really needed anymore.

~~~
pauldw
1) You drive.

2) The robot helps you drive.

3) You help the robot drive.

4) The robot drives.

~~~
aetherson
1) You drive

2) The robot helps you drive, you start to zone out, and plow into, let's just
say as a random example, a truck crossing your lane of traffic.

3) You help the robot drive, while you are super, super, super drunk, and
best-case you stop all traffic on four lanes of freeway.

4) Maybe we need to skip to this step.

~~~
serge2k
> 2) The robot helps you drive, you start to zone out, and plow into, let's
> just say as a random example, a truck crossing your lane of traffic.

This is my concern. How many days of sitting around for 12 hours not doing
anything (because the computer is pretty good) does it take before the
truckers who are supposed to be alert and ready to take over are completely
zoned out. I would probably last about an hour.

~~~
Vraxx
that's the thing, at the point that the computer is already that good, missing
that one accident isn't optimal sure, but it's definitely better than the
current state of vehicle operation.

~~~
aetherson
No it's not. People here have a really exaggerated vision of how bad human
drivers are. Even the most pessimistic views of how common accidents are
suggest that there is one contact collision every 75k to 100k miles or so.

An autonomous driver which was twice as dangerous as a human, then, would
still go 37k to 50k miles between collisions. A human who was trying to
backstop that robot's fallibilities would be required to pay close attention
for weeks between actions. Which is _inhuman_.

~~~
GFischer
I don't know where you're getting that data, but it's incorrect, at least here
in Montevideo, Uruguay, and in Brazil.

Source: I worked for an insurance company for 8 years, and part of my job
involved updating casualty models.

There are a LOT of accidents, but most are fender-benders. I guess if you
exclude those, yes, a serious collision occurs about those numbers.

~~~
aetherson
I admit that I have no idea what the accident rate is in Uruguay or Brazil.

In the US:

The Department of Transportation gets reports of one accident per 250k miles
(roughly). It is broadly agreed that many accidents are unreported, with
estimates of the true rate ranging from 1/200k miles to about 1/75k miles.

For example, this document from the US Department of Transportation:

[https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...](https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812101)

suggests 5,687,000 total crashes (including fatality, injury, and non-injury)
in the US in 2013.

This graph:
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M12MTVUSM227NFWA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M12MTVUSM227NFWA)

puts total vehicle miles driven in 2013 in the US at 2,980,181,000,000.

So divide: 5,687,000 / 2,980,181,000,000

~~~
GFischer
Wow, yes, there are a LOT less accidents in the U.S. According to other
statistics, there are 5 million accidents, for a population of 300 million. In
Uruguay there are 50.000 accidents for a population of 3 million, and with a
LOT lower average mileage per driver.

That's something we've discussed a lot here - there's NO way self-driving cars
can go around South American streets - unless they learn to be very
aggressive, beep the horn, cross streets whenever they can, shout and
otherwise interact with other drivers.

And we mostly don't have highways. Americans drive a lot in highways, that
must skew the per mile accidents.

I don't know how often accidents like fender-benders go unreported in the U.S.
though.

~~~
GFischer
Before anyone chimes in, yes 5 million in 300 million is the same as 50.000 in
3 million.

What I wanted to mention is that there are a LOT more cars it the U.S., and
the average US driver drives a LOT more than the average Uruguayan driver.
(I'd have to look up hard numbers, but that's the gist of it)

------
aresant
"More than double the fleet" . . . from 6 to 12 trucks in 2017

I have a hard time believing that Otto was more than an opportunity to pick up
engineering talent and that their interest in freight - for now - is more than
an ongoing PR opportunity.

------
nashashmi
In a previous HN discussion, there was talk about the last mile being the most
expensive and enduring process of automation.

This being posted today makes me imagine there being truck transfer stations
where humans will board trucks before city entry points and driving them in
and out.

------
coldcode
I wonder how they will handle truck inspections, generally you have to wait in
a long line to drive over the scales.

~~~
tim333
At the moment there's a guy in the truck to take over. A little further in the
future you could have a video like to a control center. Full autonomy for that
stuff is probably a way off.

------
awt
Anyone ever read Shadowrun? I remember in one book there were automated trucks
that shipped goods through the unsafe areas between the large cities...

~~~
walshemj
mm Just ripe for hijacking by a rigger/decker combo

~~~
shostack
And then you trace the signal back to the rigger and get the cargo and the
rigger's deck/drone fleet. That session definitely paid off for my crew.

------
JMCQ87
Hope there won't be any serious crashes early on, I suppose.

------
riebschlager
Yeah, but will the autonomous truck be able to call in to right wing talk
radio shows and say racist things?

~~~
dawson
Yes, I believe they've licensed Microsoft's AI chatbot "Tay" for this purpose
/s

------
Ericson2314
So phase one is cruise control? :D

