BMW have cars that drive themselves, it’s a start
youtube.com/watch?v=DRF_KaWzxq4
Despite the fact that trains and planes can quite easily be operated without human control on board, they never, ever will be if they’re to carry passengers (apart from DLR and simple light-rail and low speed infrastructures). Reason being, who’s going to get on a plane flown by a robot? Or a high speed train hurtling along with nobody in control? There’s no way this technology could ever be applied to vehicles on the public road as there are far too many variables, many of them entirely unpredictable, which computers could never work with.
The biggest threat to trucking work is freight moving to rail. That’s not much of a threat anyway because there’s very little extra room on our main lines for freight. And how’s that freight going to get from the rail terminal to it’s eventual destination… by lorry of course! So at the very worst, long distance trucking could be significantly reduced only if successive governments plough massive amounts of money into reopening a majority of our lost lines closed by Beeching.
That, and hydrocarbon fuel running out or becoming too expensive, but there’ll have to be some alternative.
Since it’ll be a cold day in hell when they reopen the lost railways, I don’t think we’ve got much to worry about.
This will be probably be wasted on most of you but here goes anyway 
In a previous life I worked at a very high level in a predominantly technical/computer environment alongside lots n lots (800+) of what can only be described as propeller headed, Star Trek fans.
As part of an induction into this environment, I used to give a talk to new employees which I hoped was aimed at bridging the wide gap between people who list there religion as Jedi, speak fluent Klingon & the rest of us who are only slightly less weird.
I’d hold a sponge ball & throw it to a volunteer to catch & state that their computers will NEVER be able to emulate that.
There would follow (a sometimes quite heated) debate involving mass, force, trajectory, decay etc. & how a computer could quite easily, given the power, calculate the math involved & instruct its robotic arm to catch any object thrown at it.
I agree with all of this & more.
I would then soak the sponge ball in lighter fluid, set it on fire & throw it at the same volunteer.
99.9% of the time this was followed by a stunned silence. Their computer that they had just programmed to quite easily catch a simple sponge ball is also going to catch a sponge ball on fire. A computer will NEVER be able to intelligently differentiate between what’s safe & what’s dangerous. It cannot & will NEVER be able to make that simplest of choices.
I could build you a truck tommorrow that will follow a chosen route (it’s commonly called a railway) & I could build that same truck to do lots of the other things that are experienced in the day to day life of a truck but I cannot envisage a truck that could be programmed to handle an exception to something that it’s been pre-programmed to do.
It’s called “exception handling”. It’s something that even low IQ humans can do quite easily (even lorry drivers) & it’s the main reason why the driver behind the wheel will NEVER be replaced.
There are actually people out there who’s dream is to drive a truck. To be a trucker. I’d love to be able to drive a truck. Why are they trying to make the world pure LAZY. The people who drive trucks love it. Some new technology is good, some is just plain stupid and they should’ve spent their money on something which will be accounted as worthy.
How on earth can they take away the human element of lorry driving?
paulfromwire:
How on earth can they take away the human element of lorry driving?
They already have. It’s called delivering to RDC’s. 
dave:
further to this, could an automated truck hook up its own trailer
can’t see why not , it can be done from the cab with a drawbar hitch
Denis F:
dave:
further to this, could an automated truck hook up its own trailercan’t see why not , it can be done from the cab with a drawbar hitch
That is the simple bit. JOST already have an automatic coupling although you need to wind the legs up at the moment. Scammell solved that one 50 years ago
What about those cars on Jurassic Park, they didn’t have drivers
Let’s hope they don’t invent the technology for a real life star trek ‘transporter’, then all truckers would be out of a job and trucks obsolete. Everything would just be ‘beamed’ to the destination 
Have heard though that some irish trucks are testing out warp drive’s on their trucks. One sailed past me yesterday on motorway at what seemed like warp 4 
Chas:
This will be probably be wasted on most of you but here goes anywayIn a previous life I worked at a very high level in a predominantly technical/computer environment alongside lots n lots (800+) of what can only be described as propeller headed, Star Trek fans.
As part of an induction into this environment, I used to give a talk to new employees which I hoped was aimed at bridging the wide gap between people who list there religion as Jedi, speak fluent Klingon & the rest of us who are only slightly less weird.
I’d hold a sponge ball & throw it to a volunteer to catch & state that their computers will NEVER be able to emulate that.
There would follow (a sometimes quite heated) debate involving mass, force, trajectory, decay etc. & how a computer could quite easily, given the power, calculate the math involved & instruct its robotic arm to catch any object thrown at it.
I agree with all of this & more.
I would then soak the sponge ball in lighter fluid, set it on fire & throw it at the same volunteer.
99.9% of the time this was followed by a stunned silence. Their computer that they had just programmed to quite easily catch a simple sponge ball is also going to catch a sponge ball on fire. A computer will NEVER be able to intelligently differentiate between what’s safe & what’s dangerous. It cannot & will NEVER be able to make that simplest of choices.
I could build you a truck tommorrow that will follow a chosen route (it’s commonly called a railway) & I could build that same truck to do lots of the other things that are experienced in the day to day life of a truck but I cannot envisage a truck that could be programmed to handle an exception to something that it’s been pre-programmed to do.
It’s called “exception handling”. It’s something that even low IQ humans can do quite easily (even lorry drivers) & it’s the main reason why the driver behind the wheel will NEVER be replaced.
You are absolutely right Chas but… That was in the olden days:)) Now we have sensors that could easily detect the heat from the flaming ball and deploy an extuingisher, catch the ball, order the safe evacuation of the area and stop the process for investigation. In production lines where robots are used it used to be the case that the materials had to be in exactly the right place or they just stopped. Nowadays they can look around, check and correct orientation and confirm that the correct part is there.
Sat nav can tell a computer where it is in the world to within a few centimetres; sensors using radar, infra red, motion etc, can learn about what is going on around them; a modern truck already depends on computer monitoring to detect faults and, in some cases, react by slowing the truck; it selects the appropriate gear in most circumstances and I bet it wont be long before the manual override is obsolete.
Maybe the first thing will be some sort of auto shunting - trailers being moved around a yard without drivers would be a start. Imagine a clerk in the office with a plan of the yard on his screen; he clicks on shunter 1 and drags it to Trailer xyz then to door 94. Outside the shunter (electric of course) rumbles off, picks up the trailer and backs it neatly on to the bay. Then it sits and waits for instructions instead of nipping to the back of the park for a chat with the other shunters and a smoke and going off-air.
Railways, as you say are hugely expensive and they cant go everywhere but you could build cheap roads for auto-traffic only that would be highly efficient and safe.
Joshh:
‘…how does it fill up with petrol…’
Petrol? Oh dear …who forgot to programme the obvious?
Happy Keith:
Joshh:
‘…how does it fill up with petrol…’Petrol? Oh dear …who forgot to programme the obvious?
I used to drive a petrol truck.
But I doubt this one would ever get automated 
Santa:
You are absolutely right Chas but… That was in the olden days:)) Now we have sensors that could easily detect the heat from the flaming ball and deploy an extuingisher, catch the ball, order the safe evacuation of the area and stop the process for investigation. In production lines where robots are used it used to be the case that the materials had to be in exactly the right place or they just stopped. Nowadays they can look around, check and correct orientation and confirm that the correct part is there.
You missed the point, a computer/robot could be enabled to do any task you ask of it & it will do it.
What about the unforeseen, something we’ve not thought of, the once in a lifetime event, something that takes real not artificial intelligence to ascertain ?
Santa:
Sat nav can tell a computer where it is in the world to within a few centimetres; sensors using radar, infra red, motion etc, can learn about what is going on around them; a modern truck already depends on computer monitoring to detect faults and, in some cases, react by slowing the truck; it selects the appropriate gear in most circumstances and I bet it wont be long before the manual override is obsolete.Maybe the first thing will be some sort of auto shunting - trailers being moved around a yard without drivers would be a start. Imagine a clerk in the office with a plan of the yard on his screen; he clicks on shunter 1 and drags it to Trailer xyz then to door 94. Outside the shunter (electric of course) rumbles off, picks up the trailer and backs it neatly on to the bay. Then it sits and waits for instructions instead of nipping to the back of the park for a chat with the other shunters and a smoke and going off-air.
Ever been inside one of those huge warehouses we deliver/collect from. Places the size of football stadiums with 5 people working in them. An automated shunter would be no more difficult than the robot forklifts that these places are built around, cost is the only factor we don’t yet see any.
Santa:
Railways, as you say are hugely expensive and they cant go everywhere but you could build cheap roads for auto-traffic only that would be highly efficient and safe.
I based my whole (previous) career on trying to boot out the word efficient and replacing it with the word effective. There is a differance & it’s a big one 
jimti:
Happy Keith:
Joshh:
‘…how does it fill up with petrol…’Petrol? Oh dear …who forgot to programme the obvious?
I used to drive a petrol truck.
Hmmm, ‘Back to the Future’ in a 4 tonner? Wow…
he has got a point. I have seen on top gear a car that takes you home, but it will come but not in trucks like we know them to day.