Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Self-driving cars seems to be where people are predicting the real money lies. I saw a BBC News report recently about a company in Nigeria which is employing literally thousands of people to "tag" street scenes ("this is a car", "this is a building", "this is a cyclist", etc) for a major Silicon Valley corporation to improve scene recognition for car AI systems.
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Long distance trucking is a very large expense for hordes of companies and it is a relatively high-paying job where automation can both improve operations over humans and simultaneously reduce costs. Which makes the capital expense easily justifiable. Especially since there is a shortage of qualified operators so the phase-in will not be costing jobs as alarmists fear.
https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/1...merica-384230/
And because (at least in the US) the interstates are limited access roads with zero pedestrian traffic, the problem is simpler for the software; less human judgment required. This should be even better for overnight cargo movement since there will be no danger of highway hypnosis lulling tired drivers to sleep. Plus convoy-ing the trucks will be easier at night.
The combination of electric trucks and automated guidance is a natural. And, yes, lots of companies are working the details, not just in silivalley. Test runs have been ongoing for a while. As soon as Tesla, Otto, and the other electric truck companies get product on the street we should see the first pilot projects in the wild.
That said, there is a third enabling technology that doesn't get as much notice in this area and that is 5G wireless. The trucks won't be fully autonomous but rather remotely managed, like drones. The onboard logic will do the mile by mile driving but routing and system monitoring will be remotely overseen by humans. That requires very low latency connectivity which is one of the operational modes of 5G.
It's a big capital expense that only the biggest companies can afford but it is a technology that is coming and coming fast. UPS, FEDEX, AMAZON, and Walmart look to be the first adopters.