Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

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I'm a diesel engine mechanic by trade, and having been to a few mid america trucking shows I can definitively say the autonomous trucking scenes pretty dead in the water. Too many "ideal condition" technologies, not enough edge condition focus (lots with no turnaround, lots with poor traction or mud,etc...) And too many companies demanding infrastructure investment that won't come.

The in cab electronic log system is still largely ignored because states want money from inspections, no autonomous system can handle a tandem adjustment, and everyone wants to put sensors all over roads that barely see replacement let alone investment and dont have maintenance factored in.

Edit: ultimately these companies miss the mark. Autonomous cannot cost more to maintain and operate than traditional fleets and owner operator/independents. It can't force shipping lots to rearchitect the entire parking lot, it can't demand world class networking and sensor systems in jeffrey Wyoming, and it can't wave away traditional safe operation practices with "autonomous"

sensors would be passive, thus no maintenance. 10,000$ every 200m is stupid. You use RFID chips or similar things.

I don't know how often signs are replaced, but at some point every sign should come with an RFID chip that encodes information about it, although you can probably just glue a chip onto a sign as well.

We scoff at Tesla's self driving claims and the valley between their "FSD" and actual required products, but they'll keep hammering at it. There's probably a trillion dollars of valuation for solving it. Musk's current managerial incompetence aside, Tesla DOES have the data collection platform to get all the data needed for self-driving, especially the "easier" stuff.

Once enough cargo is moving along a route, if there's sections of that route that are not ideal for automated movement, that will be brought to attention of the transportation agency.

The value proposition is obvious: generally, interstate highways are almost totally unutilized from about 10pm to 5am (outside of cities). 6-7 hours of transit that could be used (and offload the transit from rush hour times when passenger cars demand it more).

can you explain the issue with logging + tandem adjustment?

Even if autonomous trucks managed to handle digital logging they'll still get stopped for inspection due to weather, traffic, and load size. The rear tandem adjustment takes place on the trailer and is mandatory for safe operation so, youre building autonomous trailers too (no one is).

How difficult would it be to build a semi-autonomous system where e.g. the forklift operator (or whoever else is involved in unloading/loading/connecting the trailer) performs the manual actions on the trailer while the robo-tractor does the parts that require driving?

An explanation of tandem adjustment (with diagrams) can be found here: https://www.bigtruckguide.com/know-how-to-slide-your-tandems...

It involves moving the trailer's rear axles forward or backward based on the load's weight distribution.

Interesting!

Seems like something that should be pretty amenable to automation, especially if you can modify the truck.

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