Hot Pizza, No Driver, Tips Not Necessary
Please note California’s Authorizes Autonomous Food Delivery Trucks.
The State of California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) announced the new regulations last week, which allows companies with a permit to operate autonomous delivery vehicles that weigh up to 10,001 pounds (4.54 tons).
“This weight category includes “autonomous passenger cars, mid-sized pickup trucks and cargo vans carrying goods such as pizza or groceries”, the DMV said.
Companies will need to certify vehicles are equipped with an autonomous vehicle data recorder as well as technology to respond to roadway situations.
Vehicles must also be certified to industry standards for helping defend against and respond to “cyberattacks, unauthorized intrusions or false vehicle control commands.”
For companies testing driverless delivery vehicles, companies need to ensure they’re equipped with a “communication link between the vehicle and a remote operator and the ability to display or transfer vehicle owner or operator information in the event of a collision.”
I clipped that image from a video in the top link. The actual vehicle may look a lot different, or not.
The important point is not the vehicle, but rather this is 2019, for a while anyway, and such tests are underway.
Amusingly, every time I do a post like this readers tell me the technology is a decade away.
Please wake up.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Thanks for sharing this wonderful information with me. I will share ti with my friends too.
Is there an armored version that drives through rough neighborhood?
I can’t believe there are people who think this is ‘cool’. That may actually be worse than the actual existence of this thing.
You know what’s really cool? The 40,000 Americans killed every year by HUMAN drivers! Super cool!
Wonder how they’ll handle the Fourth Turning?
So who is liable for allowing these on the roads? I don’t mean financially liable, but who gets directly and meaningfully punished in response to damage they might cause ? A persona, not corporati or departamentalatus…. who ?
I won’t wait for anyone to reply, because it would only be a scape goat.
The important point is not that there are tests of the technology, but that they are being allowed.
“Vehicles must also be certified to industry standards for helping defend against and respond to “cyberattacks, unauthorized intrusions or false vehicle control commands.””
Excepting law enforcement, of course, which will always be able to take over driverless cars, once they get established. I look forward to riding in robot cars in the future, but I won’t ‘own’ one.
It’ll be Uber/Lyft/Taxi or whatever.
Here’s how scientists convinced self-driving cars that stop signs were speed limit signs
What people are discounting here is that it is very possible that one of the most important components of hurtling down a freeway at 80 mph may well be a sense of survival and a conscience. Computers do not have and cannot be given a survival instinct, they cannot be taught to value life or anything else. They never had a mother, were never loved, and do not seek to protect their kids above all else. They are programmed and nothing more, and they cannot be programmed for every possible situation that comes up on roadways. You think a 400 pound buck cares that it is a computer driven car that he jumps out in front of? If signal interruption causes a massive pile up and casualties then think about it, if they could provide a constant signal with adequate purity and strength to operate a million cars at a time don’t you think you could watch ESPN without your Dish Network signal degrading to nothing by now?
Also, TSLA: $425.25, just 8 months late.
Combine the delivery truck with solar powered roof and you can bake pizza en route. Then invent a solar powered robot that delivers the pizza all the way to the sofa.
Merry Christmas.
I still need it to pick up the pieces, make sure they aren’t too hot and feed them to me so that I don’t get my hands and the remote control soiled with pizza sauce and sticky cheese.
This was an interesting PBS news story about autonomous driving from a couple of months back:
Look Who’s Driving
As self-driving cars take to the streets, investigate how they work, and if they are safe.
RUNTIME: 53:21
After years of anticipation, autonomous vehicles are now being tested on public roads around the world. As ambitious innovators race to develop what they see as the next high-tech pot of gold, some experts warn there are still daunting challenges ahead, including how to train artificial intelligence to be better than humans at making life-and-death decisions. How do self-driving cars work? How close are we to large-scale deployment of them? And will we ever be able to trust AI with our lives? (Premiered October 23, 2019)
A computer program cannot ever be better at human instinct than humans. It is an oxymoron. Computers might be taught the price of objects but never having been human they cannot ever be taught the VALUE of anything. And no matter how they try to include every possible scenario and combination of road conditions and circumstances and events they will never be able to code enough for all circumstances. Such a program would be so large and unwieldy that it would not be functional. You go ahead and ride in these things and remember that some of us were trying to warn you how much you would regret giving up your freedom of movement. The vast majority do not want these horrors on the road, but they are getting shoved down our throats anyway and why? For profit, just as Boeing made the deliberate decision to put profit ahead of safety and comfort it will be worse with these computer cloud driven cars. The sheer deceit in reporting on them is more than enough to make a reasonable person skeptical.
I’m in Shanghai at the moment and I saw one of those room service robots in a lift going to someone’s hotel room last weekend. It looked pretty cool. That’s going to do away with a lot of jobs also.
It is an abomination that is going to have devastating consequences for your freedoms. Most of us are old enough we will not have to live (at least not for long) with these horrors, some of you are though. And one thing in particular that will come of this, one day those machines will be more important to their owners than the public they serve. Eventually it will be humans that are no longer needed and just an inconvenience that are useless eaters demanding support (taxes) from the robot owners. As machine technology gets better and better human value relative to that will get worse and worse. You have been warned.
Ok doomer
Thanks for the compliment Realist.
These are not conspiracy theories Realist. Just read what the leaders and designers at Waymo, Uber, Lyft, Tesla, and others have seen as our future, no private ownership of cars, essentially all transport would be along the Uber model but in electric computer driven cars, note they don’t call them taxis because people associate taxis with high cost, so they call them ride sharing, but taxis they will be. Musk goes further and foresees a system of tunnels (remember he owns the Boring Company) and hyperloops that will replace cars in congested downtowns. Meaning public transportation for most people.
Once the trillions in malinvestment is reality no matter the negative externalities it will be law, and will be enforced, because even an economy the size of the US cannot afford the level of malinvestment this will represent. By spending this much we will have made it our destiny no matter if we like the results or not, we will be stuck with it. And it will be expensive, once you must use them for all transportation they will be a necessity and necessities are exempt from price discovery and from elasticity of supply and demand. Just look at hospital billing. Once people have no alternative there is no limit to what can be billed.
You think this is not a conspiracy by a few for profit? Then you are just not paying attention, and the only reason it is difficult to frame it as a conspiracy is that it is no secret, anyone paying even half attention to what is going on can see the statements of how it is going to be.
In this case the negative consequences are going to be to your freedom of movement, when you move you will be watched every single moment of your movements, documented, and computers will decide who gets to go where and when and who gets to wait all under the oh so reasonable heading of crowd management and flow management, but which will have as it’s first priority profit. Shoulda bought the more expensive ticket. And I hope you like the airlines attitudes about passenger comfort, because that is not going to be just when you get on a jet and travel far away, it will be every single time you leave your house. You will have NO control over your environment once you are outside your home. Everything from leg room to temperature to availability of restrooms will be dictated to you.
I see it as having a major effect on something intangible yet important to the human soul, it is going to crush the life out of spontaneous behavior, once these insidious things are your reality any action will have to include the consideration of getting into one of these devices. Once they are a fact of life your only control will be to sit at home and not use them, once you consent to use them you have no control over anything till you get to your destination. There will be no more just jumping into your car and going out for dinner. You will not have a car. Besides, your groceries will be delivered as will your restaurant orders. We will have gone from that being an option to that being the only way you will be able to get them. I have never had groceries delivered, I will not even buy clothes online, it never fits right, never looks like it did in the photo, because I know what happens to the worst of the products in a bin that live shoppers will not buy, it gets shipped out to those too lazy to go to the store. I go to the market and select what I want and if all the avocados are hard as rocks or too mushy I just do not buy, how do you do that when a computer selected items for you?
These are NOT unintended consequences, they are known in advance and the people who are going to profit simply say too damned bad, when it is the only way to get around you will have to pay and you will just get used to it.
These are NOT unintended consequences, they are known in advance and the people who are going to profit simply say too damned bad, when it is the only way to get around you will have to pay and you will just get used to it.
See: link to theconversation.com
The article cites London where auto ownership and use is less convenient than public transportation. In fact London made it less convenient and fabulously more expensive in order to FORCE people out of their cars, and central planners will tighten those screws till using a private car is intolerably inconvenient no matter what. They instituted a huge toll on streets in the hub of the city, they made parking a thing of the past unless you own land/garage that you can park in, they have taxed the private car to the point only the affluent can afford one, MOT, motor tax, license and registration, insurance is unbelievable, where parking is available only a millionaire feels no pain at paying for it, fuel taxes are far more than the actual fuel, but all the people of London live just as happily as before right? Wrong, they have to live with what they are allowed and so stiff upper lip and all that, but the average person has to plan something as simple as going out for Chinese and that means public transport or taxi and the restrictions on time and operating hours, and they have to make choices about whether or not the hassles are worth the effort. Their choices have been made for them, and people like you welcome that with open arms and for what reason?
Disrespect is something you may occassionally get away with at Mish but don’t make it a habit okay? Ask AvidRemainer what happens to posters here that disrespect other posters.
What’s human value now? Observing our macro behavior, I’d estimate 68 bucks and change, depending on how like the payor they are. When there were a billion of us, we were a marvel of evolution, intellect, and technology. At 7 billion, we’re vermin destroying our habitat in preparation to fight over the scraps.
I’m sure the robots will keep some colonies of us out of curiosity. We make great porn, after all, and there will never be a robot Jimi Hendrix. They’ll certainly keep some of those Boston Dynamics robot-kicking fiends from the youtube videos alive for centuries, to amuse the KickBot the robots develop.
But first, the robots will come for our medicine. This is how you will know it has begun.
You make an important point and one I should have, freedom is a measure of human value, if any authority comes along, be it government or the robotic overlords, or ETs from Alpha Centuri, the worth of the human being can be measured in how much freedom they are granted. The loss of a freedom such as freedom of movement or the impingement upon freedom of association is a major devaluation of human worth. The trick at this point is to do it gradually and market your own enslavement to you so that you welcome it. Then once you have lost any vestiges of freedom you will wake to find you have no choices left, they have been made for you.
“As machine technology gets better and better human value relative to that will get worse and worse. You have been warned.”
A major reason for this is a tax policy which taxes human labor but not machine labor. If we reversed this, then machines would be at a disadvantage.
Tax what you want less of, and raise the price of what you want less of. We tax labor, and we raise the minimum wage. Policy indicates we want more bots and less human labor.
Snow and ice are the game changers. Southern US will get the technology moving.
Not saying they have a perfect solution for all weather, but I saw a video awhile back where they are already working on that. Moreover, northern cities tend to have many days of the year without snow and often do an alright job of clearing the sidewalks of snow and ice anyways.
Snow removal robot:
link to digitaltrends.com
They have self delivery bots in Estonia. My wife who was there recently just told me about them.
Assuming Estonians are the same as zombie Americans who mostly seem to walk around with their heads buried in their smart phones (whatever is so important that they have to stay in continuous awareness, wherever and whenever?), how does the bot avoid constant collisions with the zombies?
Yep! May be there will be a separate lane for these in the future (like a separate bike lane)