As the title says Daimler cancels its platooning program as there aren’t the real World benefits to make it worthwhile.
They are pushing ahead with atonomous trucks, but last year Uber, who claimed the first delivery with an autonomous truck, (still required a driver to get the truck on and off the motorway) dropped their program to focus on autonomous cars, although plenty of other companies are pushing ahead, but at the moment most seem to have got to the point Uber got to, that is level 2.
Is the hurdle to move beyond this point bigger than these companies first thought?
From what I’ve read the big money to manufactures will be delivering an autonomous truck that doesn’t need an operator, that means 24/7 operation and no wages, so will semi-autonomous really offer the financial benefits to make it worthwhile?
muckles:
Is the hurdle to move beyond this point bigger than these companies first thought?
Yes.
Level 3 involves the driver being able to take control in the event something happens the AI can’t deal with. Jim McBride, the autonomous vehicle head at Ford said that Level 3 should be abandoned and is in fact trying to get Ford straight from Level 2 to Level 4 because " asking the driver to instantaneously intervene—that’s not a fair proposition." And he’s right. You as a driver who has effectively been a passenger for most of the journey has to have the ability to recognise something is going to happen, grab the controls and take the required action as soon as the notification comes up whilst you’re driving at 60MPH travelling 90ft a second. Yeah right, don’t think that would go that well and chances are by the time you’ve worked out what is going on the event has happened. Level 3 is going to result in lots of accidents in those vehicles that use it.
Level 4 is basically autonomous driving with the driver being required for the things the vehicle wasn’t designed for such as say a family car driving down a dirt track.
Level 5 is full autonomous driving like a human coping with all conditions no matter what they are.
My own personal feelings on the matter is those that coined the idea of autonomous driving didn’t understand the true scale of the task ahead of them and how complicated it would be. They weren’t really true drivers themselves so didn’t have a full understanding that no matter what you write in the rule books there’s lots of behaviours that come into play. Example, some busy motorway exits. Law says you cannot drive on a hard shoulder. During peak hours it is acceptable behaviour by those who drive in that area that you queue for the exit on the hard shoulder, everyone who drives there regularly knows that, those who don’t pick up on the fact when they see what is happening and follow suit. You would have to programme the AI to understand that there are circumstances where it is acceptable to break the rules and even the law and it has to work out when to do that. You can’t write a mathematical algorithm for that.
Level 5 in my opinion will only happen when almost all vehicles are level 4 so playing by the written rules and that itself is still way off.
