I would think that a physics model would also give a reasonable automated system superior control over where the trailer is at a given moment (and to account for different trailers).
My brother is a lorry driver who frequently crosses the Turkish - Bulgarian border with his truck (as in once every 2 weeks). Once or twice he caught refugees (or whatever you want to call them) trying to get inside his trailer by cutting through the thick textile material that covers it, while he was awaiting at the border. You generally do not whant people mixing with your industrial equipment while the truck drives at 90-100 km/h. In other cases it happened to him that other people had stolen diesel gas from his tank while he was asleep during the mandatory break (this happened somewhere in Western Europe, I forget where).
And leaving aside all this, assuming that bad people won't suddenly stop stealing and generally doing bad stuff to unattended expensive material (like trucks and the things that the trucks carry), being a truck driver you're also doing lots, and lots of bureaucracy work. I once shared the cabin with him as a passenger during one of his routes, while we passed two European borders. The amount of paperwork he had to fill in was mind-blogging, I half-jokingly told him that his job looks more like a clerk-job than being an actual driver. Now, lots of clerk jobs have already been automated, I know that, but it mostly happened in the private sector, inside private companies doing business with other private companies. But once your clerk-like job involves having to do business with several State-like entities things become a lot more complicated, with legislation changing once every 6 months, being very diverse from State to State etc.
What I'm trying to say is that theoretically the self-driving problem looks achievable for trucks, but once you get into the messy details things become a lot more complicated.
He should let them ride with him in the cab up front, then.
It's the human thing to do - and in another universe (or if this universe were configured only slightly differently) they could be his own family, after all.
They are not going to let you cross the border with a cab filled with refugees/asylum seekers/undocumented immigrants.
The point is, I'm actually amazed at the downvotes, and that people aren't naturally, viscerally having a more human response -- "For heaven's sake, can't I think of a way to help these people? They're fearing for their lives, after all!" -- rather than the response described in the post I was responding to: "Oh shit, it's risky/complicated! Avoid, avoid!"
Especially given this history, among other sordid events in the past:
And to think that just because Turkey isn't currently running gas chambers that these people have nothing to worry about is, unfortunately, very naive:
Amnesty International has slammed Turkey for expelling dozens of Syrian refugees to their war-stricken country, saying the move is in violation of international law.
According to a new report released by the UK-based rights group, a total of about 80 Syrian asylum seekers, who were previously held incommunicado in a detention center in the Turkish city of Erzurum, were forced to leave for their country, with 50 more people facing deportation.
-- source: look it up yourself
Drug smugglers are another group that could use this and how would a cop stop an autonomous vehicle to search it they would have to have a back door which could be abused
> Ok, but what if the refugees were lowered by a helicop...
Sensor on the roof. Sensor on the side. Sensor everywhere.
Outside of national borders, smuggling felonious quantities of hard drugs from state to state is already trivial.
Trucks getting cut off is the norm in many areas. Punishing people for normal is generally not smart.
Car drivers already take advantage of trucks leaving a safe distance or their slow acceleration in traffic.
I also have to imagine they will be a ripe target for vandalism, especially if operators don't aggressively remove graffiti.
And they'll also be surrounded by camera's and hard drives. I would imagine that the sensors that can see through fog could also get more detail than the average CCV camera - meaning that even with a mask, you're going to get a lot of detail on vandals or road hazards (aka: You going 5mph in front of one)
None of that will change and that's not dependent on drivers.
Is a lone driver with a tire iron, mag-lite, or billy club really the deterrent to this? Especially, the stereotypical obese early 50s driver?
AI sensors combined with some sort of 360 view VR with drivers for the last mile with full AI on highways/freeways would allow for progressive roll out of self driving technology. A lot of video to push down the wire though but probably manageable with modern codecs.
That's assuming nice weather conditions. Mudslides, flash floods, extreme code, ice, snow, etc. needs to be taken into consideration.
And if there _are_ dangerous conditions that a human driver could navigate but an autonomous one would give up on, is that so bad? The industry is making enough efficiency gains to offset that.
The people duped into this will lose their driving skills and pretend it's other humans fault for not conforming to the program they invested in. I'm not all that worried, the market will sort this out in the US at least.
Can't even imagine a manslaughter case where a driverless vehicle killed someone. Who's at fault? Most fault current resides in the driver, as they're the final call.
Exactly. Humans. Humans are the bugs in their code. The control writers will argue for more laws so their programs work. The possibility that their code revisions are futile will dismissed as [insert buzzword]. I am excited that we get to watch this play out. The wildcard is biological CPU's: http://www.research.ufl.edu/publications/explore/v10n1/extra...
I'd imagine the quality of life would be significantly better too since they would work in the same spot with co-workers and could go home every day.
Actually, working in the same spot with coworkers was exactly the reason I started driving a truck. Going back to that would be an enormous downgrade in quality of life for me and a lot of drivers.
Humans get sleepy, get emotional, zone out, and make all kinds of mistakes all the time.
The first generation of driverless trucks will still have a human as passenger to be backup in case of mistakes. You may be thinking, "What's the point if there will still be a human there? s/he might as well drive." Well, humans still need breaks and can help give feedback to Truck for it to improve.
The first generation won't be perfect, but it will be on its way.
Perhaps this is more of an occurrence on re-treads.
Driverless trucks are a very interesting concept. Once they're on the freeway, I would think most automation would work (relatively) well. But getting through traffic congestions, busy multi-turn-lane intersections, and making sure you don't sideswipe someone who's hugging the line seems rather complex given the different trailer dimensions and blind spots, (un)marked lanes and everything else it takes to get to the highway.