UK plans robo-car tests on motorways in 2017 The United Kingdom's annual budget is delivered this week and chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne has let it be known that it will include extensive trials of driverless cars. In a pre-budget statement dropped to media Osborne describes driverless cars as perhaps “the most fundamental change to transport since the …
And I hope they've all been trained/programmed for the gazillion miles of roadworks on the M1 too.
Still, I'm sure all the companies involved will be paying their fair share of tax too.....and I'm sure we'll be hearing that announcement......imminently......any second......really.......I'm sure it's just waiting to pop out.....
At first, I wondered what on Earth robot cars had to do with the budget. If the government want robot cars, then they can change to regulations to make them legal, and Google will turn up. If they are threatening to spend money on robot car software then I can see the project completing in the UK shortly after the NHS goes paperless - and at a similar cost.
Perhaps if the government throw enough money at robot cars then they will have to cancel some other over-priced software project like storing everyone's browser history.
In other news, DARPA is offering money to people who can turn consumer electronics into improvised weapons.
>At first, I wondered what on Earth robot cars had to do with the budget
Actually, through Innovate UK, some very good R&D is being done in a large number of areas. They provide grants, and also a very structured and focused project framework, which encourages private companies and academia to cooperate towards stated goals.
I've not read the budget, but I assume it's going to put a lump of money into this sort of model, which has been very successful in other areas.
Some very good PR. When you actually look at the technology, it is years behind and limited in scope. Google, for example, let Alphago practice on 90 million online games to refine its algorithm. Similarly millions of miles are available to their cars.
We're still talking about delivering a machine which has no programme built in and learns from watching a single driver in a single vehicle (talk at Oxford Martin last week).
Not really - one the driving part of the lorry is automated, the rest is quite easy to do. Most delivery drivers just have an electronic gadget nowadays for signature anyway.
And automated unloading from, say, a bunch of side-curtains isn't that hard to imagine. There are mines where almost the entire vehicular process is automated, and their cargo isn't nice things loaded onto straight pallets.
All it has to do is turn up, get authorisation (you can just load the thing with cameras and have a "human" the other end use the video feed to check that there's someone present to sign, resolve arguments, etc.), and then either let the destination unload or start sliding stuff out on standardised rails.
The bigger problem is what happens if there's a problem. International travel presents the problem of stowaways (but I suppose, with human rest stops needed, or human-openable curtains, you can just turn the lorries into a mobile fort-knox), then you have cargo-displacement, ordinary vehicular failures, etc. It could get messy. It'll probably be a long time before that gets close.
But taxis, buses, Amazon delivery vans ("Your parcel is outside. Scan your receipt on the locker panel on the side for your parcel"), even supermarket vans, can be automated one-by-one quite easily. I reckon one of the biggest markets might even be the school run. Why bother having to get your child to school by 8 (but not a second before), and then have to run back at 3:30, when you can just offload them to a school bus, or send them in a personal vehicle that you can WATCH deliver them to the door?
There is currently a shortage of drivers and teh average age is rising every year, the ones currently in the industry will stay and can move from job to job as they please, it's the youth who will lose out on the job prospects and their pity is naively misplaced..
Trunk work may drop off in 15 years if they can get bigger trailers allowed and reduce the break regulations but overall delivering anything to anywhere outside the main purpose built depot off the motorway needs a human. Taking a vehicle that will regualarliy need to drive on the wrong side of the road due to the physical size constraints of the UK road network and unload itself, if it can make those decisions then it's not lorry driving but just about every job that will be gone.
There was a video about an automated forklift installation where the moajority of employees were forklift drivers, the company is growing so again they don't fire the 10 guys they have but instead use robots for the new work. Where it would have been a 16 hour shift on Monday, not much to do the next 2 days and a massive amount of work on Friday/ Saturday which previosuly would hav needed 2 new employees to cover the highs and lows they just get robots to replace them, where it's subtle or complex work that requires any kind of thought they keep the humans on.
I never got why everything has to be described by the number of jobs it might impact. If a job is obsolete, it's obsolete. We can't keep lamp-lighters around "just to keep jobs" now that we have electricity. We don't fawn over the loss of blacksmith since the internal combustion engine. And do we really care that "printer" is now more of desktop item than someone pressing lead blocks onto a bit of paper?
I know "it's people's jobs" so it's sensitive, but quite what do you expect? That your job is guaranteed and protected forever even long after it's useless and obsolete? When self-managing IT networks come about, I'll bugger off and retrain, or get a job fixing or making them. Sure, it's an upheaval, a life-changing event, but that's how things work.
I have cousins who are taxi drivers. They are currently protesting about Uber and the like. What they don't get is that protesting that Uber etc. "are stealing our custom" is like a stable owner complaining that cars "do a better job". Either argue with your unions to allow you to compete (to be honest, taxis already have several unfair advantages just to keep taxi jobs alive - and, hell, it took years for a taxi mobile app to appear), or be prepared to look for something else - maybe not today, but soon.
Quite why we should preserve jobs that are being obsoleted just to keep people with out-of-date training in jobs, I can't fathom. It's actually quicker, easier and cheaper to obsolete them, put them on the dole queue and make them retrain rather than subsidise an sub-par service that can no longer compete.
Honestly? I'm still waiting for automated Tube trains. They don't go on strike for the pettiest thing. They don't earn more than me for pushing a lever back and forth. They don't throw you around the carriage because they're running a bit late. And they might be able to make an announcement I can actually understand. I thought the DLR was going to lead the way, but apparently we're subsidising some of the best-paid employees in the world to (sometimes) do a job, a job that it's proven can be automated satisfactorily. The lost time and business because of Tube strikes must be enough to automate the network ten times over by now.
Dear taxi drivers - if your job can be done by a machine in the near future, you might want to think about a new job you could do, and how you could get there. Like, maybe, a job that doesn't rely on a skill that something like 80% of the adult population does for themselves for most of the week.
It's actually quicker, easier and cheaper to obsolete them, put them on the dole queue...
Don't think of it as "number of jobs it might impact", think of it as "number of voters whose income will be substantially reduced".
Now think of ways in which the government can lose itself an election.
For a politician, this is exactly it. For a more humane approach, you might think of the individuals who will lose their jobs and the impact that will have on their lives. The comparison between tech pros and drivers is not exactly a fair one: for the massive majority of skilled tech work, most of the skill comes from being able to learn new things quickly and adapt to things you haven't seen before. "Re-skilling" is a career requirement, and my particular role becoming automated is just another in a long line of "threats" including the tech becoming obsolete, industry trends running against me and so on. This is less true of lorry drivers, and it will be much harder for them to get other jobs.
This is not to say that these jobs shouldn't be automated, of course. The gains to "society" outweigh the pains of the individuals - but that doesn't mean the individuals don't suffer, and in a compassionate society the people who are benefiting from their pain should help them. Right now, this is probably best done by increased facilities for retraining and adult education; in the future, it may be that we simply pension people off. We live in interesting times.
I'm not unsympathetic, I just don't see why it's surprising, or a major fuss.
There are plenty of industries where "learning" is required - there are few where you can carry on doing the same job forever in the same way. Builders have to cope with new construction techniques, new health and safety regulations, new building codes. Waitresses have to cope with new payment methods, a new menu every night, gluten etc. intolerances and so on.
The human animal is built to learn. Those who don't want to aren't going to be able to stay in the job they like forever. In fact, the inability to learn is going to make you HAVE to learn more often - because you'll be out of a job because you refuse to change to the new ways, and then you'll have to change career because nobody wants you.
If anything, this is always my answer when people blather on about what education actually does, and why a degree in Media Studies or whatever is going to help people "in the real world". It's got NOTHING to do with the subject. It's got everything to do with the ability to learn, and the incentive to learn, and keeping your mind elastic.
For decades people have been told the importance of education, self-development, training, learning, etc. If they choose to ignore it, they will find themselves in the dole queue and being FORCED to do it if they want to earn a proper wage. I don't see why we should feel any particular sympathy towards one category of people compared to, say, those that lose their husband and are unable to cope, those that lose the ability to keep walking, those that have a stroke, etc. Just because you stuck in a career and refused to change when it was obvious that change was coming, why do you deserve more sympathy than someone who was made redundant out of the blue? And if the redundant guy goes and learns how to be a waiter, or a dustman, or stack shelves in B&Q, then he's probably more deserving than the guy who's come from a dead industry with no future and refuses to do anything else.
I come from a skilled profession, yes, but I do not have any IT certifications. I started off many years ago making websites. When those become heavily design-oriented, rather than technical, I moved into another side of IT that was more technical because that's what I could do. I have no vendor qualifications. I have nothing but a) experience and b) an ability to learn. It's a) that gets me work and b) that keeps me in it, even through career changes. There are plenty of professions that that's true of, from electricians to restaurant workers, parcel delivery to warehouse worker.
Few professions stay static - possibly cleaning? But even there, I spent yesterday pressure-washing my own driveway. A few years ago, I would have had to hire someone to bring such equipment. Someone came round the other day offering to clean my gutters. I'm seriously considering just getting up a ladder and pressure-washing the things, it won't take an hour in total and I don't have to pay anyone and can use equipment that cost me £50 to buy. Where's the future in that career for him, too?
Things move on. Those that won't / can't learn shouldn't be protesting for everything to stay static. They should be taken out of the job market and encouraged to come back in some other way. Sympathy has little to do with the practicality. Hell, I'm suggesting we instead pay them to DO NOTHING effectively, but be taught how to learn. It's the practical option, after all. At least then others can progress.
"There are plenty of industries where "learning" is required - there are few where you can carry on doing the same job forever in the same way.
And "politics" isn't in the first category, but is in the second.
This is politician meets technology again, and statistically the outcome is unlikely to be pretty.
One of the phrases here is incumbent subsidy. Taxis, for example, are allowed to use Bus lanes, giving them an advantage over other vehicles. They have signage at airports, train stations etc. to direct people to them. They have parking spaces set aside for their use. And they are not subject to parking fines, for stopping to pick up or drop off passengers.
There is a massive incumbent subsidy here. And we, the taxpayer, pay for it with millions of our money spent on creating these parking spaces etc. in every capital project.
No doubt this will shortly be followed by a government announcement that in order to take advantage of development work carried out elsewhere, the UK will switch to driving on the right.
This change will be phased in over a period of two years, starting with automatic cars and large goods vehicles.
A boost for the non-existent british automobile industry?
"In 2008 the UK automotive manufacturing sector had a turnover of £52.5 billion, generated £26.6 billion of exports and produced around 1.45 million passenger vehicles and 203,000 commercial vehicles"
"In 2014, more than 1.5 million cars were produced, the highest since 2007"
It'd be nice if people didn't bad mouth the industry we still have left in this country. It could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Britain does still 'make stuff'.
Want more efficiently utilised roads?
Let people work at home more frequently (lots of office jobs where people at their desk daily for "presentism" reasons when often, with sensible scheduling of meetings with other colleagues / customers, they could work from home at least 1 day a week)
Have clean, cheap, efficient and regular public transport so there is an attractive alternative to the car for commutes
Do away with the 9-5 (variants thereof) culture, i.e. where most people have a similar working day then you inevitably get "rush hour(s)" peaks of traffic on the road.
Driverless cars could play some role though, if multiple passengers carried e.g. picking up kids from multiple households would be useful for reducing school run congestion.
Have clean, cheap, efficient and regular public transport so there is an attractive alternative to the car for commutes. That would be called driver-less cars!
If you analyse most journeys as door to door you will find that the speed of the bus or train is only a small factor in the equation. Busses and trains make the mistake of concentrating you and then dispersing you. From here in the west country I almost have to go to London to get anywhere else not west of London. I can get to Birmingham faster by care than I can get to London even by plane to catch my connection to somewhere across london to get my train to Bmham to get my local bus to somewhere I then have to walk to my destination.
A self drive car or minibus connected to a central scrutiniser can pick me (and several others on the way) and take me to my destination.
And there is no logical reason why it cant also be called public transport.
An increasing number of roundabouts exist in North America. One is a few hundred m from my house.
I met one roundabout in the UK that had a Yield sign stuck in the middle. I'm watching left at the speeding VW, wondering why he's not yielding to the traffic on the circle, when I finally catch glimpse of the Yield sign on the circle. Crazy.
Hey. Let's send the self driving cars to the Swindon Magic Roundabout.
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"... roundabouts exist in North America ... Swindon Magic Roundabout ..."
I once worked in the centre of Swindon and from time to time some of our American colleagues would come to visit us. After a 9 hour flight they would get in their hire car at Heathrow or Gatwick, trundle along the M25/M4 and then on into Swindon, and there they would encounter the Magic Roundabout. More than a few arrived very shaken. None of them ever tried the MR again.
I can't see driverless cars being that welcome.
I'd have The tube, trains done, then buses and freight (they'd save money by not having to stop whilst the driver has a nap and a prostitute). Once all those are sorted then cars can drive themselves. As we're assimilated by the little identical taxis that move us from A to B whilst we browse the web and data is collected to sell us things then we can all start wearing the silver suits and form part of the hive mind. It was always the vision of the 21st century that we'd all be alike so best start conforming.
"Need" is the problem.
We don't really demonstrate a "need" for humans in the parts we have automated. In fact, almost the opposite. The DLR operates with only token humans on board, basically there to reassure and press the button if something goes wrong. Anyone can do that.
This is precisely the problem. Do we "need" humans to chauffeur us around in taxis? Not really. Do we need human drivers actually ON the train? Rarely, and I'd be happier with no driver but a policeman on board instead (I bet a Tube driver earns more than your average policeman).
We don't "need" these people, but we're being forced to have them by industrial action and unions who are in fear of their members jobs. But a computer doesn't go on strike, even if it only ever goes wrong as much as a human would. As such, we have no "need" for these people, only a "desire" or possibly a "reassurance". That's something entirely different.
And given how my bank, my car insurance company, my telephone or broadband provider, etc. just doesn't want me to speak to a human any more, I can see the way things are going to go eventually.
We don't "need" these people. And that's the biggest part of the problem.
And perhaps not because I don't believe it is going to happen any time soon.
"trials to take place on British motorways" Partial automation on motorways, already by far our simplest and safest roads? I can see that.
Car trains with automation to allow greatly reduced following distances and so increased motorway throughput. Is it going to be worth fitting cars with all that equipment just for the time spent in motorway trains? Probably not so it will take tax breaks or car train only lanes to allow it to happen.
Due to the frequency of junctions on most of the UK's motorways, car trains will cause more problems than they solve, unless they are made to use the centre (aka fast) lane. Anyone who has tried to exit a motorway through a nose-to-tail line of lorries in the outer (aka slow) lane will understand the problem.
Also car trains need an assembly and starting point, a bit like the old fashioned railway goods yard and a similar facility at their end point. Plus in all my driving it is rare to see more than 2~3 lorries of the same company travelling in convoy today for more than a couple of motorway junctions, so it does beg the question as to whether the problem being solved is actually one that exists on the UK roads...
I don't think you understand how "car trains" work. Any suitably equipped car can join or leave at any time because they are all in communication with each other and are electronically connected, not physically connected. If a car in middle of the train needs to leave at the next junction then they all adjust their speeds slightly to give that car space to pull out at the junction then they all close up again. Cars joining the motorway send out a signal to attract the attention of the nearest car train and adjusts speed to catch up to or be caught up by the nearest.
With modern processing power, even if a car train is effectively obstructing access to an exit slip, they should be able to identify a car in the next lane over indicating and adjust speed or even split the car train to allow a manual car through. That might be unfortunate for BMW and Audi drivers though.,
As for the old trying to exit through a lane of nose to tail lorrys, that's where the skill of anticipation you are supposed to have as a driver comes in. You *know* there's a line of lorrys. You *know* your junction is a couple of miles ahead. So you start looking for a chance to move over while indicating and the odds are a lorry driver will let you in so you can join the slow traffic. If you are in a hurry and leave it too late then tough. That's your fault for not taking action early enough. No one is going to slam on the anchors so you can zip through a gap barely a car and half long just because you want to save 10 seconds on your trip.
Car trains with a lot less automation and intelligence were tested out at least 50 years ago using proximity sensors.
One of the interesting things in what has been written here is that the optimum lane for car-trains would be lane 2 (the middle lane on most motorways). There is no reason why they would not be able to travel at 70mph (which is the general speed in lane 2*), which would allow slower vehicles to inhabit lane 1 most of the time, and faster vehicles to use lane 3. Personally, I'd be quite happy to latch on to a car-train (though at a safe distance) since it would make adequate progress in a reliable way.
I confess that I love the idea that car-trains would be a way of encouraging Audiots and BuMWees to use indicators - no indicator, no exit!
* Subject to the lorry driver that just "has" to go 1mph faster than the lorry in front of it, and the (usually) woman that seems to think that lanes one and three are very wide pavements and that the national speed limit is 55mph.
These things will be doing emergency stops because of a bit of litter blowing across the road, steering their drivers into the ditch because someone has hacked into the control systems, or simply refusing to move because the satellite link is down or there is a solar flare or there is an ar(se?) in the month, or some wag has stepped out in front of it to make it stop so they can hijack your wallet. Unless all cars are driver-less, or they have their own roads, it ain't going to work.
And won't we miss the fun of being able to drive ourselves (and run down the wag if he looks dangerous?)
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