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posted by takyon on Tuesday July 28 2015, @12:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the autobots-rolls-out dept.

Daimler has been road-testing its autonomous trucks in Nevada since May. From the BBC:

Daimler is currently seeking certification for a self-driving truck so it can be tested on public roads in Germany.

[...] "We're testing in Germany on our own proving grounds. The next step is getting real-life experience on German highways as well," [spokesman Wolfgang Bernhard] told the BBC. "We're looking to do that in the second half of the year."

Bernhard is confident Daimler will get certification within weeks. The self-driving trucks use GPS, radar and video cameras to navigate, and there's always a driver present and able to immediately retake control of the truck if needed.

Spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.


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  • (Score: 1) by WillAdams on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:04PM

    by WillAdams (1424) on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:04PM (#214869)

    Take a look at this chart:

    http://blogcnccookbookcom.c.presscdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/JobsByState.png [presscdn.com]

    (from: http://blog.cnccookbook.com/2015/05/20/trying-something-new-tax-the-robots-not-the-people/ [cnccookbook.com] )

    Things are not going to go well unless we can work out some way to keep people employed w/ dignity, or suitably assured of housing, food, medical care, security and some sort of reasonable social mobility.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @11:07PM (#215099)

    Perhaps the original NPR link for that employment map?
          http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state [npr.org]
    Includes history going back to 1978 (when Secretary was quite popular).

    What's with all the truck drivers? Truck drivers dominate the map for a few reasons.

            Driving a truck has been immune to two of the biggest trends affecting U.S. jobs: globalization and automation. A worker in China can't drive a truck in Ohio, and machines can't drive cars (yet).
            Regional specialization has declined. So jobs that are needed everywhere — like truck drivers and schoolteachers — have moved up the list of most-common jobs.
            The prominence of truck drivers is partly due to the way the government categorizes jobs. It lumps together all truck drivers and delivery people, creating a very large category. Other jobs are split more finely; for example, primary school teachers and secondary school teachers are in separate categories.

    The rise and fall of secretaries: Through much of the '80s, as the U.S. economy shifted away from factories that make goods and toward offices that provide services, secretary became the most common job in more and more states. But a second shift — the rise of the personal computer — reversed this trend, as machines did more and more secretarial work.

    Manufacturing jobs disappeared: This story we knew already. Machine operators and factory workers had a dominant presence in the Midwest and parts of the South through the late '70s. Then a combination of globalization and technological change made many of those jobs disappear.

    Fewer and fewer farmers: Our map shows the tail end of a century-long trend. Farming technology (everything from tiny seeds to giant harvesters) keeps getting better, which means fewer and fewer people can grow more and more food.

    Government: The most common job in D.C. is lawyer. Heh. On a related note, Northern Virginia is full of federal contractors — many of whom work as software developers.