Page 1 of 1

Now that the world has it's public 'KITT', it's time for the self driving Mobile HQ.

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2016 6:14 am
by jup
https://youtu.be/sIlCR4eG8_o

"A truck carrying 50,000 beers spent two hours driving itself down a Colorado highway."

A truck named 'Otto' (Oh, hey...I do believe that's a montage to the 'Otto Pilot' from 'Airplane!'.) has just made it's first successful delivery on the open highways of America. Which means that The Simpsons was right about a new technology, all along.

Interestingly enough, the driver merely walks away from the steering wheel after merging onto the highway for the whole trip. I 'thought' there were a couple laws out there against the driver's seat being vacant during locomotion. Maybe not in that state.

This is also something that I've mentioned a few times over as a warning against the loss of jobs to automation. However, the video makes several good points. -Not enough drivers out there to meet a growing demand for deliveries. -What drivers there are...have a trend of giving up the job within the first year. (And for some good reasons that the video doesn't go into.) -Human error causes way too many accidents and fatalities.

And I figured the emergence of the self driving trucks would come out of another nation...like Australia or somewhere that isn't throwing up any laws against automation.

Re: Now that the world has it's public 'KITT', it's time for the self driving Mobile HQ.

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2016 9:31 pm
by snafu
I've driven that same stretch of freeway probably thousands of times...while I wouldn't put it up there with, say, Chicago rush hour or navigating an outer belt, it's a relatively high-traffic area and requires some gear changes on the hills getting closer to the Springs. I'm rather impressed.
If we could bring automation to the early morning deliveries (midnight to 4am) when a lot of accidents happen, due to fatigue, drivers could still have jobs during normal hours.

Re: Now that the world has it's public 'KITT', it's time for the self driving Mobile HQ.

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2016 5:50 am
by jup
I had brought up this subject at work. The truck driver gave some more information about it that this video didn't specify. According to this guy, he found another article about the AI getting overwhelmed and actually crashing the truck. Supposedly, thirteen people died in the wreck.

He tried to pull up the news article on his smart phone. But, was unsuccessful at finding the news bit.

And I'm looking for any news reports on this and can find nothing, either. All data is stating the delivery was a complete success. So, either this guy was wishfully thinking that the machine couldn't take his job or there's some kind of cover up going on in cyberspace.

Re: Now that the world has it's public 'KITT', it's time for the self driving Mobile HQ.

Posted: Mon Oct 31, 2016 10:55 am
by snafu
There *was* a better-published crash of a self-driving car that went into the side of a semi. It turned left into the white side of a semi trailer, becuase it couldn't "see" the flat, white side of the trailer.
That event I *did* see on the news.