Self-driving truck startup TuSimple raises $95 million, breaks “unicorn” barrier

self driving trucks... long hauls will probably be no driver in it at all... and the trucker loses his job... End up just being a spotter at the delivery point... or the warehouse forklift driver to unload it... Lost jobs taken over by automation.

 Just think of the wreaks there would be if gps and the computer signals all get corrupted... .  man made disaster waiting to happen.

I saw yesterday that a Telsa 'selfdrive' car RAMMED into 2 cars ! One of them a COP car !!! I cringe at the thought of the deaths and destruction a 'selfdriving' semi would cause.

 The good thing bout livin in a rural community is we ain't got to worry for some time for them self drivers to get a foothold here,,,,,I just cannot imagine drivin alongside a "semi" loaded with many thousand lbs of cargo,,,,with NO Driver,,,chit,,,,!!!

Just think, self flying airplanes. They already have them!

re: Just think, self flying airplanes. They already have them!

yes, but fewer of them( planes) and LOTS more room ( THREE dimensions ).

Today's pilot can press a few buttons at end of runway, press 'go', sit back and sleep, computers do everything, even land at destination. Well, that's how the tech should work, cept sadly in 737 max8s.

 

On the other hand........a few years ago on my way to Chicago, came up behind a semi not really staying in his lane all that well.  Had the opportunity to finally zip around him with some extra room, and......wait for it.....had a newspaper opened up and flipping through it!!!!  Least he wasn't texting, right?

Oil pressure: already monitored by the computer.  We already have tire pressure monitoring.  Air pressure, just another pressure sensor to the computer, easy as it gets.  A strange noise in the rear end can be detected by vibration, or temperature, or change in torque, or.....All this stuff is either already done, or easy to do, or right on the horizon.  To make an interface from this computer to another is no problem at all. 

Like the gravel train that hit black ice in front of my son a couple years back?  he was following the gravel train, it started to swerve, ended up going down the road backwards looking out his windshield at my son before he went in the ditch.

 

So how is this better than an automated system?  Automated system could be instantly informed of road conditions, and react before a human ever could, and react in the best way.  So might some of the very best drivers, but not for the careless idiots.  An automated system won't be getting road head, won't be looking at tractors, won't be texting somebody, won't be trying to do something else or keep up on paperwork or.....in short, won't ever be distracted.  Hacked?  Maybe?  Total failure of some kind?  Maybe.  But put it all into perspective with statistics, and which way is safer?  I don't necessarily like it either, but most of the arguments here don't really stand up to scrutiny, at least not on a likelihood to happen basis.

My company service truck has anti-lock brakes and 'dynamic stability control'.  It also has tire pressure monitoring.

That means, when I'm driving, and wheel speed sensors, the suspension position sensors, and the onboard computer's gyro suspect that something isn't right, the computer takes control and attempts to apply JUST ONE WHEEL's brake in order to put it 'back in a straight line'.

Now, it also has an absolute fit if I don't put the tires right at 80psi.  In our previous trucks, the sidewall spec was the same, but with more-or-less 'empty' trucks, we got rapid tread center wear at 80, and the handling was dangerous.  We dialed back to 55psi, and the wear issues went away, handing was perfect.

I dunno if any of you have experienced that, but when I'm driving down the county chip-and-seal road, there's spots where, between the empty truck, and those very highly inflated tires, one little bump will cause a tire to bounce a whole lot, which causes the truck to shake, triggering the Dynamic Stability Control... which abruptly applies a brake which steers you right into a ditch.  In my case, it was at 17mph, and fortunately, there was no traffic, no pedestrians, and no farm animals, and the ditch was gentle... a little tug from the neighbor's Chevy got my helpless 2wd 3/4t pickup back under it's own power.

Here's a thought for all to consider:

What if, in the process of a normal drive, a pothole triggered the aforementioned system, taking control of the vehicle and runs over a schoolchild...  

I have driven for three and a half decades, and NEVER had a bump or pothole cause me to lose control of a vehicle, yet now, I'm very forcefully taken out of control, and yet, being behind the wheel, would still be held responsible for something that THE VEHICLE's COMPUTER does.

It is my firm opinion that ANY system that takes away MY control of the vehicle, transfers all liability of damage, from that moment onward, to the hands of the manufacturer of the vehicle, and to the government entity that mandated the system's authority to override the driver's capacity.

Next:

Driverless vehicles.  A technology-worshipping individual will argue on behalf of the sensors, connectivity, and computational velocity of a 'system', but will do everything to hide from one basic fact:

EVERY technologic device has it's weaknesses.  As charged, a human driver can exhibit poor rationale in operation.  An electronic machine is no different, and while some will argue that it is 'more predictable' or 'more reliable' than a human, the machine has some very serious weaknesses:

1)  It's breakdowns occur in very minute orders... a bit lost, or a byte corrupted, a E2PROM memory register 'burned' to the point of unreliable state, a board-level brownout event caused by an ESD-weakened MOSFET, an ignition coil with failing insulation on a wet day... and problems with a hall-effect sensor fouled with rust... and neither the computer, nor it's maintainer can recognize the loss of capacity.

A Human, even if they don't understand the intricacy of all the operations going on underhood, or on the road, knows when SOMETHING HAS CHANGED.  A Human doesn't need special sensors to detect a loss of coolant into the passenger compartment, or onto the road behind...

2) A computer may be able to get up-to-the-second travel information via a network connection, but... it can not smell coolant leaking from the car ahead.  It cannot look at it's sensors and see that some machine spilled oil onto the pavement on the last 60 feet of the exit ramp.  It cannot look at the bridges ahead and see that cross-winds have frozen a strip of ice across the right lane, but not the left.

The computer cannot look off into the ditch and decide to forget about trying to stop, but instead, release the brakes and steer for a soft place to land.

A computer does not have 'intuition'... it cannot recognize the difference between 'good data', 'bad data', and 'questionable data', because it doesn't see the accidents along the side of the road, or read newspaper stories, or see blood and gore on evening news.

The computer cannot 'see the future', it can only see the present, and a small fragment of the past.

When a human drives, the human looks into the future, and sees the weather, the road, the changing circumstances, and they know, using sensors FAR ADVANCED from the computers we have... they make effective decisions LONG before any other technology is even aware of the circumstances... and they can do it when a tire goes flat, or the wheel is missing, or the tie-rod end has broken off, or a wheel gets jammed by a piece of truck tire, or a deer is running across a field on the right.

Computers cannot think, they can only follow instruction coding written by someone who's sitting in a chair, looking at a screen.  In that respect, the 'driverless' vehicle, is one that is piloted by someone who isn't there, doesn't know, and has nothing at stake.

This reminds me of the trailer type dump truck driver that caused 10s of MILLONS in damage to the Hamilton Skyway bridge and 'commuter chaos' a few years ago. The drunk essentially got off,BTW.

The cause.. he left the dump box UP for several miles ,finally hitting the bridge.

What I shook my head at is that a SIMPLE $20 switch could have prevented the carnage HE created.

I know you 'can't fix stupid'  BUT you can slow him down a tad....