Interesting. There might be an opportunity there. Instead of product drop offs from a beverage distributor, food distributor, pharmaceutical distributor, etc. and a pickup from a hazardous waste service provider, have the long haul routes terminate at a hub where the truck is loaded with products across multiple suppliers for local stops.
Go to a local store today and you might see multiple deliveries that could be done with a single vehicle in the future. Route planning is not trivial to optimize well, and isn't a core competency for most companies, it's something they need to do.
Maybe Walmart wants to be that logistics supplier. They might have the real estate to build hubs, too.
How do these trucks cope with adverse weather conditions? e.g. sliding down a hill on icy days, dealing with unplowed streets post-snowstorm, driving along where a cop is diverting traffic, or dealing with traffic light outage?
They don't. There is a safety driver on board. The trucks do a 7 mile closed loop. And I bet you money when weather gets bad, the good old fashioned human drives the truck. This is just another fucking non-event hyped by a news website in the realm of autonomous vehicles.
Registering hypothesis before I read the article: No, they arn't.
They are not yet doing this so at least the tense of the article is wrong. It's likely that there's an internal project but it's nowhere near rollout.
Ok, brb.
...
Post Read: Better than I expected!
The title gave me the impression that the trucks are doing deliveries to end customers. Not the case. They are doing 'middle mile' trips between two known points over and over.
Also they have remote safety drivers watching.
The underlying company is Gatik (https://gatik.ai/), and they carefully map the exact route and add custom logic for it before they let the trucks run free. Seems like a good niche solution!
With two operating trucks I'm still going to call the headline 'mostly false' but I was surprised at both the solution and the progress so yay!
Yep, I honestly have more hope for this type of autonomous driving. Elon may be right about cameras theoretically containing more information than LIDAR, but that's like saying an encrypted file contains more information than a smaller, unencrypted file. Sure it may be true, but if you can't crack the encryption effectively and repeatably the point is moot.
In the meantime stuff like this is what's going to really make an economic difference. Boring supply chain shit that makes everything marginally cheaper and most people are completely unaware.
“ Walmart and Silicon Valley start-up Gatik said that, since August, they’ve operated two autonomous box trucks, without a safety driver, on a 7-mile loop daily for 12 hours”
It’s a huge step.
Getting past the tipping point where a technology is used daily in business is important because then there’s a sustainable business. Other companies with imitate and iterate.
Sure, we all want perfection to spring from nothing but that never happens.
Does anyone know more companies in this space? Some of the legacy truck companies probably do experiments like these as well but their business doesn't depend on it. So mostly looking for startup answers.
i agree they are definitely getting better though. i have memberships to both and have been watching how they have improved quite a lot in last few months. the big reason why i got a membership to walmart+ was due to Amazon going from (1 day shipping for last 3 years) to (4+ days!) in the Louisville market, which makes no sense. We have multiple warehouses in the area. Tons of articles/forums discussing it, so definitely im not an edge case. Strangely enough when testing out the membership types (personal vs business) of amazon they are now just finally giving me 1-day shipping on my business account but not personal (verified using both items). Walmart+ has them completely beat on some items that are usually essentials that you can get at the local store. Plus they are offering same-day shipping for free, since they are coming from the store. I've had multiple times where I ordered something from Walmart+ where it said 2-3 day shipping and within hours, it turned into 'Oh we found it local' and delivered it that day.
Interesting how "autonomous" driving is now basically what we do with drones. Remote controlled cars with some driving assistance. How long before this labor gets optimized so only illegal immigrants are willing to do this kind of work? Even better you can outsource this to a poorer national for pennies...
[+] [-] TYPE_FASTER|4 years ago|reply
Go to a local store today and you might see multiple deliveries that could be done with a single vehicle in the future. Route planning is not trivial to optimize well, and isn't a core competency for most companies, it's something they need to do.
Maybe Walmart wants to be that logistics supplier. They might have the real estate to build hubs, too.
[+] [-] sys_64738|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olyjohn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leereeves|4 years ago|reply
Have there been icy roads, snowstorms, construction, or traffic light failures on that route since August?
[+] [-] wantsanagent|4 years ago|reply
They are not yet doing this so at least the tense of the article is wrong. It's likely that there's an internal project but it's nowhere near rollout.
Ok, brb.
...
Post Read: Better than I expected!
The title gave me the impression that the trucks are doing deliveries to end customers. Not the case. They are doing 'middle mile' trips between two known points over and over.
Also they have remote safety drivers watching.
The underlying company is Gatik (https://gatik.ai/), and they carefully map the exact route and add custom logic for it before they let the trucks run free. Seems like a good niche solution!
With two operating trucks I'm still going to call the headline 'mostly false' but I was surprised at both the solution and the progress so yay!
[+] [-] scottLobster|4 years ago|reply
In the meantime stuff like this is what's going to really make an economic difference. Boring supply chain shit that makes everything marginally cheaper and most people are completely unaware.
[+] [-] melling|4 years ago|reply
It’s a huge step.
Getting past the tipping point where a technology is used daily in business is important because then there’s a sustainable business. Other companies with imitate and iterate.
Sure, we all want perfection to spring from nothing but that never happens.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cinntaile|4 years ago|reply
Does anyone know more companies in this space? Some of the legacy truck companies probably do experiments like these as well but their business doesn't depend on it. So mostly looking for startup answers.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] AssertErNullNPE|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpindar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] outside1234|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TigeriusKirk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dominotw|4 years ago|reply
1. poor customer service
2. poor online shopping website
3. limited selection ( compared to amazon)
they need to fix this before anything else. I really dont understand why someone would shop on walmart vs amazon.
[+] [-] lenn0x|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sschueller|4 years ago|reply