UK government funding for autonomous truck research

[JockoT]

The UK Department of Transport has today announced funding for the Transport Research Laboratory to carry out trials of autonomous truck platoons of self-driving lorries to run in public on major UK roads by the end of 2018. This is part of an £8.1 government scheme to test the feasibility of truck “platooning”.

https://www.motoringresearch.com/car...uk-roads-2018/

[gone-ot]

If you think "crossing" street traffic is bad now, just wait for a platoon of vehicles to hinder crossing traffic!

[stefanv]

This idea could be made even more efficient by platooning 50 trucks, physically connected to one another, with the first one pulling the rest. Put them on steel rails and efficiency goes up even further. I recall that we used to have something like that.

[Xist]

Trains?

[JockoT]

Originally Posted by Xist

Trains?

This is everyone's reaction. But the point is, once vehicles are full autonomous then they will communicate wirelessly with each other, and trucks from different companies, heading to different destinations, will be able to platoon up on trunk roads and freeways, taking up less room and using less energy. Just as autonomous cars will do. This is just early research, for what will surely come, just as day follows night.

[stefanv]

That's more or less how railroads work. Railcars from different sources and to different destinations are added to and removed from trains as they make their way across the country. The only disadvantage with trains is that removing a car from the middle is time consuming. The big advantage with trains is that there's usually only one engine, albeit a much more powerful one. I'm sure the fuel efficiency of trains is much better per kg of useful load than a platoon of trucks, even taking into account that a fleet of smaller trucks is still needed to get things from the train stations to their final destinations.

[JockoT]

That works for Canada and the US and other large counties. Here in the UK a truck can drive from one end of the country to the other, John O Groats to Land's End (837 miles), in 24 hours, given a driver swap. Delivering a container to a rail depot in the UK it wouldn't be en route in 24 hours. Containers are moved all over Europe by truck because the railways cannot compete. The only goods that do well on UK railways is the like of coal and oil. Vast quantities of which are regularly moved from one dedicated rail head to another. And even then they are very low priority on the railways, with passenger traffic being number one.
These lorries are heading to the channel ferry bound for Europe.

[freebeard]

These lorries are heading to the channel ferry bound for Europe.

That's a lot of truck drivers to put out of work.

[JockoT]

Originally Posted by freebeard

That's a lot of truck drivers to put out of work.

It certainly is. Autonomous vehicles will be as big a disruption as the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs.

[Grant-53]

Here in the States truck driving is the 10th most dangerous occupation. Rolling friction is less for rail cars. Our passenger trains have to use track owned by the freight companies. A disruption in radio propagation will have a major effect on autonomous driving. The roads will still need to be plowed and vehicles serviced.