What is the likelihood of these (and other similar trucks like mixers and even normal straight trucks) being completely automated in the foreseeable future? I am seriously considering dropping out of university and getting my class 3/DZ license (CDL B I think for you yanks). I know for a fact that if I get that license I will immediately be hired at 27/hour, but if I do this I want to be able to make a permanent career of it, it's always been a dream of mine.
What is the likelihood of these (and other similar trucks like mixers and even normal straight trucks) being completely...
Jace Flores
Adam Myers
Not in our lifetimes. Anyone who says otherwise either overestimates driving ai or underestimates general road conditions. It's unlikely automation will happen until all road construction is finished.
Nathan Brooks
stay in university, finish university, then go and get your license. in the future, not having a degree is like not having passed high school, that's how important university is becoming.
Nathan Gonzalez
There are also many truck with very specific application that creating an AI to do the same task will cost more money than it will ever be worth.
Benjamin Hughes
Are you a boomer? Because this sounds like the bullshit that boomers have been stuffing down millennials' throats, and it's caused more harm than good.
Tyler Foster
More than that, vehicle automation in general right now is impossible. All existing self-driving ai is done by cameras, and camera based self-driving ai will never advance beyond its current stage. There are an uncountable number of situations that they can't handle. For example, a cardboard box in the middle of the road would shut down an entire interstate if all cars had camera based ai. The only way it'll ever be a possibility is when they're able to develop a way for every car on the road to communicate with each other, and they need to figure out a way to tell cars where the lane is without relying on cameras reading the stripes. Neither of these things do I see occurring any time soon.
Blake Cruz
Either great bait or terrible advise.
Julian Perry
Only thing causing harm is you faggy lazy millennials thinking you can live off my dime and never get any education or hard working job.
Nathaniel Rivera
They are working on ways for cars to communicate with each other
en.wikipedia.org
I have enough trouble getting my computer to connect to the internet sometimes so I wouldn't put much faith in whatever they develop.
The only other solution is to redesign our road system to accommodate self driving cars but at that point you might as well start laying rail down.
Sebastian Bennett
>I have no idea what I'm talking about
they don't want to fully implement AI to every truck to drive from the warehouse to the loading bay, the idea is (and has always been) to have the AI drive in the interstates/highways, where conditions are more or less predictable, and once the rig is approaching urban centres, a driver picks up the lorry and drives it to its final destination.
If you think automation is some dream of the the future, wake the fuck up. there's plenty of companies already trying fully automated cars/trucks, and the billions that will be saved by said companies will propel the implementation of self driving trucks
Jayden Sullivan
Then what does self driving transport truck that stick to the freeways do that freight trains cannot?
The one thing they can do is theyll have more specific path finding to a degree since trains will need to unload at a specific depot while the self driving truck will just need a driver to take over.
Wyatt Nelson
you can't compare freight trains to transport trucks, at all.
Daniel White
Care to explain how I cannot?
They both move freight and that's all that matters at this point
Tyler Thompson
Connor Garcia
The anons saying that there will be trucking jobs for the foreseeable future aren't wrong. They're also not wrong when they some parts will probably NEVER be automated.
They're also missing the point--lots of those jobs ARE trivially automated, and on the cusp of disappearing. Long-haul trucking, with all those easy freeway miles, will be the first to go.
Next, you'll see longshoremen disappear. Shipping containers are already standardized. Robots can run cranes, and self-driving tech is already good enough to mule the standardized containers around the docks. Warehouse jobs will start to go next--if robots can remove containers from ships, they can remove them from trailers. If Boston Dynamics ever leaves YouTube for the real world, they might even unpack the contents of those containers.
Eventually, the self-driving tech will get good enough to handle urban driving in good weather. That's when you'll start seeing taxi jobs disappear, along with the rest of the trucking routes. In the meantime, lots of warehouses are already located on cheap land outside of city limits and near highways--you're going to see robo-longshoremen unload ships onto automated semis, which will hop on the highway and unload at an automated warehouse.
As automation advances, you'll start seeing trucks driven remotely like drones. Self-driving tech might not be able to handle EVERY use case, but one driver in a remote command center could babysit 20 drone trucks, displacing 19 drivers.
At each step of the way, you'll have more and more newly unemployed truckers competing for fewer jobs. It might take fifty years to automate dumping gravel in the right spot -- but you'll have 3.5 million ex-truckers competing for those jobs long before then.
Good advice would be pick a career in a field that's going to see MORE jobs, not fewer.
Mason Cruz
So the only difference is cost?
They still both move freight from point A to point B
Trains have the disadvantage of requiring a depot to unload the freight. Afterward it will be taken to the destination usually by a transport truck.
Transport trucks on the other hand can take it directly to the customer.
But self driving trucks are restricted to freeways and will require entering a depot and waiting for a human driver to take it to the delivery point not much different to the train.
So can you explain to me in your own words how "self driving trucks" are different to trains outside of posting websites explaining the difference between "traditional" transport trucks and trains?
Alexander Rodriguez
>the interstates/highways, where conditions are more or less predictable
Yeah, you've never done any long haul driving if you think interstate driving is predictable. Come back when you've got over 500000 miles under your ass and tell me how predictable interstates are.
Gabriel Parker
predictable as in, less 'chaotic' than urban centres. literally just a straight line with a few lines
>hurrr durr dey them machines ain't just smart enough
that google car logged 1 million miles accident free until some idiot hit it, and that car was driving in urban LA
low IQ truck drivers fail to understand how advanced AI has gotten in the past 10 years. An autonomous driving car on the interstate could be done by a team of university students at this point
Aaron Jenkins
One thing people forget when automating trucking comes up, is LIABILITY.
When johnny wrecks his shit, we know who to blame. But when an AI truck crashes, (and they will), who accepts liability? The company that programmed the AI, the company that "employed" the AI? This is a very important issue, trucking companies aren't going to adopt new tech to put themselves on the chopping block.
Jaxson Miller
You'll definitely see level III autonomy, but that's pretty much just cruise control for the brakes and wheel. Anyone that's worked around trucks knows that all new tech in trucks has had to be babysat because none of it is actually engineered for road conditions.
Long haul has been dead for 10 years thanks to rail. Ate up a ton of marketshare AI could have been marketed towards.
Ports have already been automating for over a decade. I've never spoken to a human the handful of times I've been to one. Scan in, get your info, get your shit, and get out.
The trucking industry already has turnover rates over 100% in some segments. That 3.5 million figure is very suspect because of that, despite it being thrown around for years. Highway truck density is way down from the peak in the late 70's.
Alexander Anderson
Why aren't freight trains automated?
They should be easier than trucks since they're on a track with a set course, yet they're still diesel-electric and require a conductor and engineer
Aaron Powell
It's trickier than you'd think. When a mile-long freight train goes over a hill, different parts are accelerating and decelerating at the same time.
They're still mostly automated, though -- GE has sold software for that for ages. AFAIK, human engineers are still around because not all the signals are automated, and data connections aren't available everywhere along the route for remote control.