What is the main motivation for creating autonomous vehicles? Take delivery drones for example, what problems do they trying to solve? If we look at it from money perspective -- delivery jobs are among lowest paying. And that's the segment that all those autonomous drones/trucks are trying to take now. So basically billions of dollars going into research to solve non-existing problem.<p>More concerning is what comes after adoption of this technology. And this adoption almost surely will come, either due to dumping strategies, some government restrictions("Roads are Not for People" act) or, most likely, both. As a consequences, ability to find a job will loosen for majority of people. Of course, liberals(that will become only more popular, broken folk loves "free money to all" policies) will be happy to write all those people some money checks out of squeezing middle class pockets. Small businesses will not win either, since maintenance costs will be hardly much lower when summed up. The only winners -- are elites. Billionaire investors and bribed politicians.<p>I would be all for robots-for-business regulations. Probably, something similar to hiring folks from abroad. E.g. -- it's allowed to use robotic system for performing specific function(from the regulated whitelist of functions), only if no human applied for it in X months with salary =< X min. salaries.<p>Otherwise, future looks gloomy to me. Any opposite opinions?
If you take your post and replace "autonomous vehicles" with "household appliances" (Dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers, ...) it might be enlightening as this is something we all already got used to.<p>I'd say most of the "problems" you point at are not related at all to "autonomous vehicles", but to automation as a whole.<p>Economic disruption by automation does exist, but mostly due to our insistence of tying in the "right to live" with "participation in the economy".<p>There are real problems with autonomous vehicles. Primarily the amplification of existing negative externalizes of physical transport (Space, noise pollution, energy, waste, ...). Autonomous vehicles will cause an explosion in the (already insane) consumption of transportation.
Lots of automation has happened and is happening in the lowest paying jobs. Agriculture is the most obvious.<p>Another one in my city : trash collectors. We have underground collecting containers for we have a RFID 'key' to deposit in.<p>Once in a while, after the sensor has called home to acknowledge it is 'full', one guy shows up with a specialized truck, lifts the container from the ground and empties it into the truck. And pooff : the jobs are gone.<p>Self checkout is another one.<p>The lowest paying jobs are also the easiest to automate. And even when employees are cheap, they are still expensive and a nuisance.
Not really, autonomy is probably not the way to go.<p>One could easily drive all trains remotely, like kids playing with a toy probably since electric trains exist.<p>We still prefer human drivers all over the world, except for some systems. Those need to be very small or closed to be safe enough. Having a driver and personal has many advantages especially for unforeseen events.
Autonomous vehicles may have the advantages in safety when nothing unforseen happens, but they can cause catastrophic chain reaktions. As critical infrastructure autonomous driving vehicles are an easy target, play them the right radar sequence and they will stop moving or endanger others.
Well, we used to have driven elevators - true they ran on tracks, but the elevator operators lobbied and harassed and warned of the doom of man......we have push button elevators. No longer is the elevator 'broken' if no driver is at work. The drivers went on to other things - we have elevators on demand.
Now autonomous vehicles are somewhat similar.
Driverless cars are useless, cars - as a class - spend 80-90% of their time parked. This is a massive waste of a resource.
Autonomous cars, perhaps limited to well delineated paved and marked roads, can give great utility, save on time/attention. We can extend this to shared vehicles as well, if we overcome the reluctance of people to share because their trunk is full of stuff they are too lazy to deal with.
HGV driving for long periods demands machine-like levels of concentration and wages for truck drivers in a post-Brexit economic environment have risen to over £50,000. I wouldn't call that a non-existent problem - of course the costs get passed on from the merchants and then to the consumer.<p>The concept of new technology eroding the job market isn't new either. Unemployment levels in the UK are so significantly low currently, you would not seriously suggest that the introduction of factories or computers had permanently eliminated the requirement for human labour on a massive scale. Why would autonomous vehicles pose a more serious threat?
> Take delivery drones for example, what problems do they trying to solve? If we look at it from money perspective -- delivery jobs are among lowest paying. And that's the segment that all those autonomous drones/trucks are trying to take now. So basically billions of dollars going into research to solve non-existing problem.<p>Drone allow deliveries to be much faster and more "parallel". In the future, instead of having 100 delivery people, you can have 10000 drones. Drones don't tire. One drone can probably do a 100 delivery runs in the time it takes a human to do 5.
You should read up on ludities or Amish people. Ludities didn't like textile machinery. Amish like approximately 19-centry technology, no electricity etc.<p>In Europe we have severe shortages of track drivers. UK currently has random food shortages and fuel shortages, because EU drivers left the UK.<p>The fact is that people do not want to sleep on parking lots, have no shower access, irregular and long working hours etc. etc. Being a professional driver sucks as a way to spend your life.<p>There is a lot more enjoyable things to do.
I think the most significant use of vehicles I've seen so far is:
<a href="https://flyzipline.com/" rel="nofollow">https://flyzipline.com/</a><p>Not so much replacing existing solutions but providing one that couldn't have existed before. At least as far as things go right now.<p>Outside of that autonomous drones have made things like mapping and other aerial sensing problems quite a bit cheaper.<p>My personal take is that delivery people will be amongst the last jobs to be automated as there is a lot of complexity involved. Stuff like drone delivery seems to have issues with scaling and rather than reducing the number of employees moving them from delivery jobs to a fleet of technicians to keep the drones going.<p>From my perspective the thing happening here is companies off-loading work onto recipients. For example quite a few of the delivery companies here now take all parcels to drop boxes and expect the customer to go pick it up. I'm not particularly opposed to that as it's probably better all round. Similarly self-checkouts seem like an improvement despite labor shifting from paid employees to the customer.
I’m not particular versed on the topic but I would have thought the primary motivators are a) increased safety (in the case of cars and transport) b) freeing up countless lost hours commuting for more productive work
Re: delivery drones, energy efficiency comes to mind. Now when I order lunch with delivery service, there's 1-2 tons of metal and plastic on wheels moving around with dino oil power, piloted by 80 kg of meat, to bring me a 0.5 kg delivery.<p>Even if the delivery vehicle ran on wheels on the roads, I'm sure it could be much lighter and energy efficient if it didn't need safely carry the driver around.
imho the only way it would be beneficial is something like:<p>- personal cars are banned (at least from cities)<p>- infrastructures are completely redesigned for autonomous vehicles<p>- governments create fleets of public transportation autonomous vehicles you can summon at any point (from 1 seat vehicle to bigger vans)<p>I don't believe in the cohabitation between autonomous and human driven cars on the existing infrastructure