[dsnuh]

I understand that the job encompasses other duties, my father is a retired truck driver. That said, my answer is "yes, I think they could, just as well, or better than any human".

You could have multiple cameras on the load using computer vision to detect movement. You could have weight sensors sending feedback to the system. I'm sure there are many ways to do this, and any of them would beat a human behind the wheel.

[sandworm101]

Then why not deploy such systems now? Prove they can handle all the odd jobs better than the human.

[dsnuh]

Huh? I'm not saying they exist, just that it's not impossible for me to imagine these problems being solved or being minimized to a level that is no worse than current human driver would perform.

[amarka]

dsnuh - I haven't seen anyone argue against "[software+hardware] would beat a human behind the wheel", its just that developing the tech to achieve this feat with the same level of accuracy as the top 10-20% of current CDL drives is extremely expensive and caries a lot of risk. Nobody seems to of cracked the nut on it.

You're right in that there are many ways to do this, but none have come even close to beating a decent human behind the wheel.

[dsnuh]

I don't see any indication in the article that they are stopping due to technical challenges. They already demonstrated it on the road, so it seems they were well on their way. It appears this project is a victim of politics and legal action.

Why do you think we need to get to the level of top 10%-20% of commercial drivers? How do you come to that cutoff point? If we had automated trucks that could move freight 24/7 with even 5% better than average accident rates (for example) would be a huge win.

[CoryG89]

I agree for the most part, but it's not quite as simple as just having better accident rates. That is one thing, but there are other considerations as well. When there are accidents, are they predictable ones, or is it completely random? Did it make a decision that we cannot explain which led to the accident? People aren't going to like completely random accidents, even if there are slightly fewer of them. Can we assign fault in the case of an accident, sometimes, always?

[dsnuh]

I think if you have a predictable accident, that's called negligence, and we have courts to deal with that.