Einride, the Swedish autonomous trucking startup, unveiled a new vehicle type that the company hopes to have on the road delivering freight starting in 2021. The vehicles, dubbed Autonomous Electric Transport (AET), came in four different variations. And much like Einride’s previous prototypes, they come without steering wheels, pedals, windshields, and, in general, no cab at all.
those would be fine if they had a big ass remote to drive it with, as long as the truck can get itself to docks & loading bays and the workers can manually steer it the last few thousand feet.
maybe the docks need to be retrofitted with giant QR codes
i think even if you LIDAR mapped every dock, a machine wouldn't be able to navigate most of them. not even accounting for loads/trailers getting left in the middle of spaces that are usually empty, there's just a ton of maneuvering that's done with implicit communication, flashed headlights, eye contact. sometimes even if the dock were completely empty and the driverless truck were the only one there, it still wouldn't be able to navigate it. a lot of docks are really weird.
now for standardized big box stores where the loading dock is almost exactly the same in each one -- maybe? but they still stash a lot of pallets outside.