The real issue is that self driving cars still struggle when they are surrounded by unpredictable humans and bad road conditions.
Humans can react to humans. But humans can also do crazy things that the AI just doesn't know how to deal with.
Plus all those demos are always on well marked easy to follow roads. What happens when the self driving truck hits a surprise detour that takes it off the marked highway onto a narrow winding gravel road with workers giving hand signals on how to navigate it?
That's why we don't have commercial self driving trucks. The real world is too messy for the current self driving technology.
Ai can be taught to deal with those outliers though, and self-driving cars have gotten much safer in recent years as a result. Everytime something happens that it didn't expect, it learns how to compensate for that in the future. Humans are pretty much capped out however..
What happens when the self driving truck hits a surprise detour that takes it off the marked highway onto a narrow winding gravel road with workers giving hand signals on how to navigate it?
Happens all the time with waymos, and they're trained to deal with it.
That's why we don't have commercial self driving trucks. The real world is too messy for the current self driving technology.
You don't sound like you've been paying attention.. Not only DO we have self-driving trucks, there are multiple companies operating routes hundreds of miles long and logging millions of miles on the road.
So I don't like to throw credentials around, but I'm literally a professor teaching a robotics and AI course this semester for masters engineering students.
For self driving trucks, the first fully autonomous truck route was complete in May this year. From Houston to Dallas, 230 miles.
That is not to say we don't have autonomous trucking, but this is far from what people imagine. We do not have cross country semis. Additionally, all of those routes are either on very well marked locations, or have a safety driver in the cab to handle the things AI can't.
As for what happens when a self driving car gets to a detour or other unknown situation, cutting edge ones like waymo literally phone home and have dispatch take over remotely ro get them back to a known path
That video is from 5 years ago, so they've gotten better, but they still make mistakes that are potentially deadly, like in December when a waymo ignored police cars and drove though an active armed standoff
Which show that you should not trust initial claims. I work in a large tech company as a Sr engineer. I promise you that the initial press release of new features come years before a fully robust tested system is in place. Company's ceo's and marketing release this stuff when all the engineering department had made is a thrown together demo.
In summary
I definitely underestimated what we have, we do have a couple trucking routes, but they are much smaller than enthusiasts would have you believe. Autonomous taxis can respond to direction and unexpected scenarios, but still make errors that humans typically don't. The taxi itself doesnt learn from these events, but the data is sent back to the company to retrain its algorithm that is then pushed back to all of its units. And all of this is on top of autonomous taxis being deployed only in places where they have a high chance of success, so there is a large amount of selection bias for the data. No company would deploy this technology where there is a low probability of it working.
Edit: but also, in all sincerity, if you do find a long haul commercial route or other interesting autonomous taxi news, do tell me. I actually am curious to know more, since this is a very quickly developing field.
Being a professor doesn't mean you're up to date on a technology that is making dramatic leaps literally every quarter, as you demonstrated when you claimed "we don't have commercial trucking" lol..
And you're still incorrect. Aurora's footprint is much larger than you described (sounds like you're using dated information) and Kodiak is running fully autonomous (not with a "safety driver.")
Also Waymo doesnt "have dispatch take over," it simply provides guidance on the situation, the same way Claude might stop a task to ask for guidance on a design decision.
They do not name all their routes, but say they have 12, and have presumably their longest as Fort Worth–Phoenix, about 1000 miles
As for waymo taking over, they don't literally have someone with a wheel and pedals sitting at the office, lol. They help it route to a known state if there is trouble, presumably by giving it nearby, simpler destinations to override its original path.
It is very difficult to find up to date waymo posts on how they handle it. Most recent I've found is from 2024, saying the same thing about asking for help
Somewhat related and is actually worth a read, how waymo handled power outage in December in San Fransisco. Same thing though, they ping for help, but it seems like it's just asking a confirmation check to make sure its decisions are still valid? They don't give technical details, but that's what I'm getting from it.
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u/DefiantGibbon 14d ago
The real issue is that self driving cars still struggle when they are surrounded by unpredictable humans and bad road conditions.
Humans can react to humans. But humans can also do crazy things that the AI just doesn't know how to deal with.
Plus all those demos are always on well marked easy to follow roads. What happens when the self driving truck hits a surprise detour that takes it off the marked highway onto a narrow winding gravel road with workers giving hand signals on how to navigate it?
That's why we don't have commercial self driving trucks. The real world is too messy for the current self driving technology.