jason wrote:For road transport, I'm not certain we'll ever see truly autonomous vehicles - at least not for many generations. But this depends on the interpretation of autonomous.
If we consider transport operating on a network system (so we ignore lifts, etc!) what present, or near future, form of human transportation is truly autonomous, ie. does not, at minimum, at least involve live monitoring/management by remote operatives?
…so it's hard to imagine a time when each vehicle would not require supervision/monitoring, and surely the volume of vehicles and routing options mean this can only be carried out by a responsible (and sober!) occupant. I'm sure remote monitoring will come, one day, of course.
The same argument exists with lorry drivers, they need to be responsible and sober (and not lie about having blackouts!) and this is harder to control if they are at the wheel of a lorry than, say, sitting in a command room monitoring multiple lorries.
The issue is more the ethics and way our laws are written. While autonomy will reduce accidents it won't eliminate them and in certain circumstances autonomous lorries will need to take avoiding action that could result in people being hurt or killed. The onboard computer will need to evaluate the situation and decide the course of action with the smallest impact. e.g. I'll drive into this car rather than that bus. This means that the programmers will have had to write the algorithms to accommodate this. If the lorry makers get sued up the ying yang if this happens then fully autonomous vehicles will never be a reality. The most likely first step with freight lorries on the public road will be driverless lorries with a driver in the cab to take over in trickier situations. Autonomous vehicles are already being used in large quarries/mines (Rio Tinto) and by the military.
