The Failure Of This Self-Driving Truck Company Tells You All You Need To Know About Self-Driving Vehicles

[olofscience 420]

20 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

For all but slow speed maneuvering latency will always be a problem. Remote operation at highway speeds in traffic will never be an option.

I've actually managed to drive a small radio-controlled car before remotely, and it was drivable up to about 700 milliseconds latency. Below 200 milliseconds the latency was not noticeable at all, it felt like I was there.

However, Microsoft recently launched a streaming game service - it's practically a video stream, you have a controller and it sends back the control inputs to the cloud server where the game actually runs. For fast-moving games you'd think latency would be a killer.

However, they manage it - ironically, they demoed it with a racing simulator: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/13/microsoft-shows-off-project-xcloud-with-forza-running-on-an-android-phone/

They did say "you need a good internet connection", so if the remote drivers are in the same country it shouldn't be much of an issue.

[gowlerk 1,901]

4 minutes ago, olofscience said:

I've actually managed to drive a small radio-controlled car before remotely, and it was drivable up to about 700 milliseconds latency. Below 200 milliseconds the latency was not noticeable at all, it felt like I was there.

However, Microsoft recently launched a streaming game service - it's practically a video stream, you have a controller and it sends back the control inputs to the cloud server where the game actually runs. For fast-moving games you'd think latency would be a killer.

However, they manage it - ironically, they demoed it with a racing simulator: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/13/microsoft-shows-off-project-xcloud-with-forza-running-on-an-android-phone/

They did say "you need a good internet connection", so if the remote drivers are in the same country it shouldn't be much of an issue.

Sure, but what are the consequences of a brief interruption in that level of performance? 

[olofscience 420]

39 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

Sure, but what are the consequences of a brief interruption in that level of performance? 

I guess we'll see soon enough...

[billvon 2,379]

3 hours ago, gowlerk said:

Erlang calculations always leave the customer on hold for the longest period that the accountants think they can get away with. Knowing full well that a percentage of them will just give up.

No, I am talking about as applied to PSTN's - Erlang B in other words.  It is counterintuituve that a city of 50,000 people only needs 64 lines to have a 99% change of always getting an outside line instantly, or 71 to get a 99.9% chance.  But that's how it works.

[billvon 2,379]

1 hour ago, gowlerk said:

For all but slow speed maneuvering latency will always be a problem. Remote operation at highway speeds in traffic will never be an option.

New York already has cellphone latencies below 50ms.  5G should improve that significantly.

[gowlerk 1,901]

18 minutes ago, billvon said:

New York already has cellphone latencies below 50ms.  5G should improve that significantly.

That'll be great when the truck is in NYC I guess. Have you ever tried to use a cell phone in rural IA? Anyway, I'm thinking that AI operated vehicles will need a level of redundancy and reliability that approaches that of aviation. Maybe more. The cost of implementing that on a large scale will need to come down considerably. And it will, but not soon.

Edited September 30, 2020 by gowlerk

[JerryBaumchen 1,046]

3 hours ago, gowlerk said:

Erlang calculations always leave the customer on hold for the longest period that the accountants think they can get away with. Knowing full well that a percentage of them will just give up.

Hi Ken,

^^^^^^ Today's American business plan.  It does seem to be working.

Jerry Baumchen

[kallend 1,619]

I hope the AI experts working on this are better than the folks who created the algorithms Amazon, Google and Facebook use to select the ads to irritate me with.  The weird stuff they try to sell me is just amazing.

[Westerly 61]

On ‎9‎/‎30‎/‎2020 at 4:01 PM, billvon said:

New York already has cellphone latencies below 50ms.  5G should improve that significantly.

Even talking about this is pointless because there are tens of thousands of miles of road in the USA that have no cellular coverage at all and probably hundreds of thousands of miles of road that has weak coverage. That dosent work. To remotely drive a car you'd basically need 5 bars 4g LTE at all times and that just flat out doesn't exist and wont for a long time. Even so, cellular internet in general is unreliable. Speeds can vary substantially and the frequencies used are very heavily saturated which makes interference problems common.

[olofscience 420]

7 minutes ago, Westerly said:

Even talking about this is pointless because there are tens of thousands of miles of road in the USA that have no cellular coverage at all and probably hundreds of thousands of miles of road that has weak coverage. That dosent work. To remotely drive a car you'd basically need 5 bars 4g LTE at all times and that just flat out doesn't exist and wont for a long time. Even so, cellular internet in general is unreliable. Speeds can vary substantially and the frequencies used are very heavily saturated which makes interference problems common.

1. Places with weak coverage are also places which aren't usually busy - so these are the places least likely to need "remote driving" assistance - the onboard AI should be able to handle it fine.
   • example - long, empty stretches of highway: perfect conditions for full AI driving
2. See my comment above for Starlink - sub-100ms latencies with global coverage

 

[billvon 2,379]

9 minutes ago, Westerly said:

Even talking about this is pointless because there are tens of thousands of miles of road in the USA that have no cellular coverage at all and probably hundreds of thousands of miles of road that has weak coverage. That dosent work.

Early on, many level 5 autonomous systems will require both cellular connection and pre-mapping of the route.  This will allow both trucking companies and long distance drivers to choose routes that work for autonomous operation.  For example, if just the I-90 was covered in this manner you'd get thousands of trucks a day availing themselves of such a service.  (And a great many US highways now have 100% coverage.)

Once that's in place, there will be tremendous pressure on cell companies (and lots of $$ as an incentive) to complete build-out of cell coverage on all major roads in the US.  And for those who can't wait?  There are plenty of satellite services that will provide an alternative - even several low latency LEO options.

[wolfriverjoe 1,339]

53 minutes ago, billvon said:

Early on, many level 5 autonomous systems will require both cellular connection and pre-mapping of the route.  This will allow both trucking companies and long distance drivers to choose routes that work for autonomous operation.  For example, if just the I-90 was covered in this manner you'd get thousands of trucks a day availing themselves of such a service...

My previous prediction was that line haul on the toll roads would be first. At least the first for big trucks. 

The ones I'm most familiar with are the Indiana (I80/90) Ohio (I80/90, I76), Pennsylvania (I76), New York (I90, I87) and Massachusetts (I90).

Line haul is basically exit to exit. They pull double & triple 'pup' trailers (shorter -27') and 'turnpike double' (two 48' trailers). The triples & turnpike doubles don't get pulled off of the turnpike. They have 'make up/break up lots' at the exits. A driver would have to bring the trailers to the lot, build the 'train', hook the autonomous tractor and push a couple buttons. 

Mapping those roads would be pretty simple. Not trivial, but not difficult. Depending on the type of mapping needed, much of it is probably already on file. Down to the location of the signs and thickness of the pavement. 

AFAIK, there's good cell coverage all along those roads.

[jakee 1,254]

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Edited October 5, 2020 by jakee

[airdvr 197]

On 10/4/2020 at 3:57 PM, wolfriverjoe said:

My previous prediction was that line haul on the toll roads would be first. At least the first for big trucks. 

The ones I'm most familiar with are the Indiana (I80/90) Ohio (I80/90, I76), Pennsylvania (I76), New York (I90, I87) and Massachusetts (I90).

Line haul is basically exit to exit. They pull double & triple 'pup' trailers (shorter -27') and 'turnpike double' (two 48' trailers). The triples & turnpike doubles don't get pulled off of the turnpike. They have 'make up/break up lots' at the exits. A driver would have to bring the trailers to the lot, build the 'train', hook the autonomous tractor and push a couple buttons. 

Mapping those roads would be pretty simple. Not trivial, but not difficult. Depending on the type of mapping needed, much of it is probably already on file. Down to the location of the signs and thickness of the pavement. 

AFAIK, there's good cell coverage all along those roads.

Until it snows.

[wolfriverjoe 1,339]

3 hours ago, airdvr said:

Until it snows.

Very true. At least for now, it's going to be a 'good weather' system.

 

Deciding where the road is under a coating of snow is difficult, even for humans.

[billvon 2,379]

6 hours ago, airdvr said:

Until it snows.

With 1 meter accuracy (achievable with a good GPS today) a GPS guided vehicle is going to do a heck of a lot better than a human driver.  And with LIDAR to detect signs, guardrails and bridges it can get a lot more accurate than that.

[kallend 1,619]

On 10/5/2020 at 11:07 PM, billvon said:

With 1 meter accuracy (achievable with a good GPS today) a GPS guided vehicle is going to do a heck of a lot better than a human driver.  And with LIDAR to detect signs, guardrails and bridges it can get a lot more accurate than that.

I have 3 GPS/Glonass equipped drones, one is commercial and two are home-made.  In "return home and land" mode they will each land within 6 inches of the take-off spot.

The chip in the home-made ones is from China and cost $30 retail.

Edited October 9, 2020 by kallend

[JerryBaumchen 1,046]

Hi folks,

Remotely driving forklift trucks.  Maybe this is how it will progress.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54431056

Jerry Baumchen

[turtlespeed 212]

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-full-self-driving-beta-rollout-starts-is-slow-cautious-as-it-should-150422.html