An autonomous delivery vehicle enters regular use in Arizona

But these are not autonomous versions of normal cars, but cars designed for this purpose, and they are much smaller

The autonomous delivery vehicle was shot. From the company website
The autonomous delivery vehicle was shot. From the company website

Just this month, just before 2018 comes to a close, driverless vehicles began making deliveries on Arizona roads. To clarify: these are not vehicles with a normal shape. Until now, conventional driverless vehicles have only come into use with a human babysitter sitting behind the wheel, ready to hit the brakes as soon as the vehicle makes a mistake. But in the new autonomous delivery vehicles, there is no place for the human driver at all. In fact, they are so small that a human cannot even enter them. They look like a combination of a large, white box on wheels, with a pair of lift-up doors that open To allow customers access to the groceries that the vehicle brought to them[1].

הרכב החדש קטן יותר ממכונית רגילה, וקל הרבה יותר. הוא מתגלגל בכבישים במהירות של 40 קמ"ש, ולכן מסוכן הרבה-פחות להולכי הרגל ולרכבים האחרים במקרה של תאונה. וגם אם תקרה תאונה, כבר ציינו שהוא קל יותר ואמור לגרום פחות נזק בעת התנגשות. ומכיוון שאין בו נוסעים אנושיים, לא צריך לדאוג להם בכלל.

This story yields two interesting key lessons.

The first lesson is that companies that want to succeed in the new market must carefully consider which of the existing concepts they want to continue to stick to. We see that the company behind the new autonomous vehicle - Nuro) - takes a very different strategy from that of the larger autonomous vehicle companies, such as Waymo and Tesla. Waymo, for example, is trying to take vehicles in their current form and turn them into autonomous taxis. The result is that Waymo's vehicles are heavy, bulky, and wasteful of energy since they only carry one or two passengers at a time, even though the original vehicle is designed to carry at least four passengers plus a driver. The legislator is (rightly) afraid of what will happen to the passengers in these vehicles in the event of an accident, and therefore demands that Waymo and its ilk meet extremely high safety standards. Until the fully autonomous vehicles can meet these standards, at least one more year will pass (and probably more). And so, Waymo's adherence to the primitive form of the vehicle is delaying the penetration of its vehicles into the market.

Noro operates more intelligently, adapting its robots only to the limited task they are supposed to fulfill. Noro's autonomous vehicles, as mentioned, are smaller, lighter and safer. They can only carry shipments, but that's exactly what they're meant for, and that's perfectly fine. When Noro decides to expand to transporting pizzas, for example, or medicines, it will be able to engineer its robots according to the new needs. But by then, its robots will have gained plenty of experience on the road.

And here comes the second important lesson: in the field of artificial intelligence, There is a big advantage for the first[2]. Why? Because modern artificial intelligence is largely based on artificial neural networks, and these are based on information they receive. The more information they are fed, the more accurate and successful decisions they can make. This means that the company that will be the first to bring its autonomous vehicles to the roads will have a big advantage over the others, because these autonomous vehicles will collect a wealth of information that will be used to train the artificial intelligence and improve their performance.

זוהי, אגב, הסיבה לכך שטסלה פתחה את האפשרות לציבור להשתמש באפשרות 'הנהג האוטומטי' שלה, על אף שהוא עדיין רחוק מאד מלהיות מושלם. היא רוצה לאסוף מידע שיעזור לשפר אותו, על מנת שתוכל להתחרות בחברות אחרות שיפתחו רכבים אוטונומיים משלהן. וזוהי גם הסיבה שנורו מנסה לשחרר לכבישים את הרובוטים האוטונומיים שלה, למרות היכולות המאד-מוגבלות שלהם: הם אמורים לאסוף מידע, ובכך לעזור להכשיר את הדור הבא של הרובוטים האוטונומיים שיתניידו על הכבישים.

So one can only wish Noro success in the new development. The more autonomous vehicles there are on the road, the faster they will learn and advance us all to the future of robots on the roads, which will arrive even sooner than we all anticipated (well, well, except for me, because I'm a futurist).

More of the topic in Hayadan:

Comments

  1. הרכבים האלו חייבים לנסוע על מדרכות או מסלולי אופניים בלבד. בכביש כלי קטן שנוסע 40 קמ"ש יגרום לתאונה תוך דקות, כי הנהגים שנוסעים הרבה יותר מהר לא יראו אותו ויעלו עליו, ואם יראו אותו ינסו לסטות ויתנגשו עם רכב אחר.

Leave a Reply

Email will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismat to prevent spam messages. Click here to learn how your response data is processed.