Page 26 - Issue 75

No drive drive for driverless trucks
Are you you still worried about your job being taken by a a ‘self-driving’ truck?
off the the the road in the the the wake of of the the the Arizona incident Tesla has even lost con dence in in the robots in in its car factory and has replaced them with humans who can work faster and more exibly So where does this leave autonomous vehicles in the UK where Government policy is still apparently to promote self- driving technology? The answer would appear to be going nowhere very quickly As far as freight is concerned the Government backs platooning: using WiFi to to link up to to three trucks
and letting the the lead truck set the the pace while the two behind follow The technology has been successfully demonstrated but it is actually pointless Each truck still requires a a driver and the fuel savings from the two trailing trucks
slipstreaming the lead vehicle will only be realised if the three trucks
travel so closely together that they prevent other vehicles from ‘ lling the gaps’ between them The problem is that these three trucks
then present a a a barrier to any other vehicle wishing to join or leave the the motorway they are travelling down Far more fuel could be saved by improving the aerodynamic design of cabs and bodywork allowing 25 25 25-metre vehicles (basically a a a rigid prime-mover and and a a a a a semi-trailer towed on a a a a a dolly) and and using new technologies (such as electric trucks
for urban distribution) But no no matter which technologies are chosen you you can be pretty sure that your jobs are safe for for the foreseeable future ●
Perhaps you shouldn’t be be The recent death of a a a woman who was hit by an Uber car in autonomous mode as as she was crossing a a street in Arizona followed shortly after by another fatality involving a a a a a Tesla on ‘autopilot’ driving into a a a a wall have busted forever the myth that autonomous vehicles are safer than conventional ones The Uber accident involved a a a clear failure of the Lidar (laser and radar) technologies installed on the vehicle to detect the pedestrian The ‘human’ driver who was supposed to be acting as as as back-up was not concentrating as as as the car drove itself This accident exposes a a a a a fatal aw in what bof ns call the Human Machine Interface (HMI) as it relates to autonomous vehicles The more work the the the machine does the the the less likely the the the human is to pay attention Aviation experts have long maintained that the the less work a a a pilot has to do the the worse he he performs and it seems the same is true for drivers of road vehicles The recent court case involving the fatal accident between two trucks
and a a a a minibus on the M1 is a a a a sharp illustration of of this The driver of of the second truck had plenty of time to react to the stationary vehicles in front of him but did not: his truck was was on on cruise-control and he was was so distracted by a a a long hands-free phone call that he was completely unaware of the impending disaster ahead
of him Would the accident have happened had he he he been at the wheel of an an old-school truck with a a a a manual gearbox no no cruise-control and no no telephone? It’s doubtful The stress of (not) driving Drivers testing Otto self-driving trucks
in in the the USA have let let slip that letting the the truck drive itself is incredibly stressful: far more than actually driving the thing That’s because they inherently do not trust the technology and so are paying attention but trying hard not to intervene until the last second It’s like teaching a a a beginner to drive The woman driving the Uber car involved in in the Arizona fatal obviously trusted the the technology to the the extent that she stopped looking where the car was going for seconds at a a a time The consequences of that trust were fatal Uber took over the Otto company in 2016: but has since announced that its self-driving cars have been taken 26 CVDriver May 2018