The drone trains are slowly taking over...
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I'll go out on a limb and guess that a fair portion of whatever productivity gains are realized will be plowed back into stock options and executive compensation.
And before someone jumps my butt - yeah, I know, its called capitalism.
Curt
The company is Rio Tinto and the trains actually have an engineer. He operates the train remotely.
juniata guy posted:I'll go out on a limb and guess that a fair portion of whatever productivity gains are realized will be plowed back into stock options and executive compensation. And before someone jumps my butt - yeah, I know, its called capitalism.
Curt
So Capitalism rewards the few over all the shareholders? Now that explains a lot of what goes on! (and once again my instructors were clueless;-)
Tommy posted:The company is Rio Tinto and the trains actually have an engineer. He operates the train remotely.
I have been following these tests for the last 3 years & I don’t think the engineer or controller is operating the train as a typical engineer would do. In a typical freight train, there is usually 1 engineer per train but that was not the intent of Rio Tinto & G.E. This engineer might be responsible for multiple trains moving independent of each other.
To the extent I understood the technology, the trains have a certain level of intelligence / autonomy built-in. The controller located in Perth monitors the train remotely but he is not involved in the real-time operation of the train. He steps-in in emergencies to take control, while the train has enough intelligence to start, slow-down, stop, blow the horn at crossings, move at the required speed for loading the iron ore at the mine, maintain the optimum speed throughout the journey to efficiently use fuel, minimize wear-and-tear, increase productivity, etc.
Initially there were some loss in productivity as the train kept stopping more than a typical engineer would for false alarms, like some intrusions on the line or at railroad crossings but the tone of their recent press release appears to suggest that they might have overcome that as they no longer have an engineer on board.
But can you blame them for doing this considering the high cost of labor? I saw an Australian documentary a few years ago, focusing on the people who work in this remote part of the world. Apparently this area is inside / near an Aboriginal tribal land, far away from a major city like Perth. To incentivize people to work there, the mining companies (BHP, Rio Tinto, FMG) have to pay big bucks & fly them in for a 2 week-stay, with the next 2-weeks off, while also being responsible for their accommodation & meals, similar to ship-crews. One cheeky guy was bragging about how he was able to afford nicer things than his friends with college education, as his pay was so good that he was able to afford the cars, he wanted & the jewelry he liked.
These are just my opinion,
Naveen Rajan
Labor costs are an issue.
And this is a railroad.
But if everything is automated, who could afford anything made by the same automation?
I wonder how widespread this model will be when we are talking crowded areas of a country (for example, along populated corridors). With remote areas like this, if the train for some reason malfunctions or the model doesn't work, likely the train company will take it on the chin from a train wreck, this happens in more populated areas would be a pr disaster. I suspect (and I don't have a magic crystal ball) that in more heavily populated areas they will be required to have an engineer on board as a backup, the way for example the BART system does.
Dominic Mazoch posted:if everything is automated, who could afford anything made by the same automation?
Someone has to design, build, and maintain the robots. When the robots figure out how to do all that by themselves, then look out Robert Heinlein.
bigkid posted:I wonder how widespread this model will be when we are talking crowded areas of a country (for example, along populated corridors). With remote areas like this, if the train for some reason malfunctions or the model doesn't work, likely the train company will take it on the chin from a train wreck, this happens in more populated areas would be a pr disaster. I suspect (and I don't have a magic crystal ball) that in more heavily populated areas they will be required to have an engineer on board as a backup, the way for example the BART system does.
I think automated trains, for the foreseeable future, will be limited to operation in remote areas, such as this part of Australia. I don't think having unmanned engines hauling volatile chemicals - or anything else, for that matter - through populated areas is going to be approved anytime soon.
And I thought this was going to be about the new robotic beer taps....
Gotta have something to wash out the taste of the Vegemite! Imagine a Scrapple and Vegemite sandwich. That would really be something. 
Dominic Mazoch posted:Labor costs are an issue.
And this is a railroad.
But if everything is automated, who could afford anything made by the same automation?
Dominic,
Blame the people, including you & me, who want all the products made with minerals / metals extracted from these ores. Not only do we want the essentials & luxuries that metals allow but we want it at a lower price which forces companies to find ways to reduce cost from their operations by automating.
Also, once these autonomous technologies have been invented & perfected, you cannot undo those advancements. People & companies will start & keep using them, no matter how fearful one is about intelligent trains transporting chemicals through cities or robots replacing humans.
These are just my opinion,
Thanks,
Naveen
Actually, I would bet most jobs at a company's HQ could be automated or placed in the cloud...... Wait a minute.....They get the big bucks counting beans!
All companies are looking to robotics to save on costs. I read a story about Lowes having robots to help customers.
Its only a matter of time before places like McDonald's and Wendy become robotic, even the food you order will be done by a robot and never being touched by a human.
so you see, trains are not far behind.
Dave
The reality is that things like AI and Machine learning have gotten to the point where a lot of things can be automated, and it isn't just things like robotic assembly lines. There are robot surgery systems, for example, where the robots have gotten to the point that instead of assisting the doctor with precision work, they are doing the work with minimal input from the surgeon (these systems are still cutting edge, in trials and the like, but still). There is advancing technology with 'self healing machines' that can fix themselves, so the jobs that might replace those being automated might themselves be replaced not long after (not to mention that when jobs are lost to automation, the jobs replacing them are generally a lot fewer, you need a lot less people to fix the machines on an automated assembly line then workers that were there). Without getting into all the ins and outs, like so many decisions involving changes like this where jobs are lost relatively rapidly, few are asking the question what do you do when more and more is being produced by less and less, in terms of who will buy what they are producing? I see all kinds of things about limiting imports, tax cuts to spur job growth, elaborate plans at job retraining, etc, but what I don't see is when people working is less and less needed, what do we replace it with? Don't have any answers, but it is the brave new world we are heading to.
A change we have not seen sense the Industrial Revolution in the UK.
And there will be revolutions in other ways. Many outside the scope of these forums.
Just came across this article on Railway Gazette news that the Dutch are planning on testing automatic train operations on a portion of their dedicated freight corridor linking their busiest seaport in Rotterdam to the German rail network. I am also hoping that they also start running double-stack intermodal trains as the corridor was built to accommodate such tall trains.
http://www.railwaygazette.com/...reight-corridor.html
These are just my opinion,
Thanks,
Naveen
david1 posted:All companies are looking to robotics to save on costs. I read a story about Lowes having robots to help customers.
Its only a matter of time before places like McDonald's and Wendy become robotic, even the food you order will be done by a robot and never being touched by a human.
so you see, trains are not far behind.
Dave
The food might be better.
Dick
What could possibly go wrong...
Rusty
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BM&LP was automated in 1973.
Just sayin...
juniata guy posted:I'll go out on a limb and guess that a fair portion of whatever productivity gains are realized will be plowed back into stock options and executive compensation.
And before someone jumps my butt - yeah, I know, its called capitalism.
Curt
Not quite: it's called Robber Barons, a perversion of Capitalism.
Driverless cars are only a year or two away. Trains should be easy to automate.
David Johnston posted:Driverless cars are only a year or two away. Trains should be easy to automate.
I see some driverless cars every day - folks reading, texting, putting on makeup, you name it. 
Rule292 posted:BM&LP was automated in 1973.
Just sayin...
The BM&LP is also a 78 mile, captive, one commodity railroad out in the boonies.
Rusty
There is a recent article in Trains Magazine about the Australian train mentioned above. The trains will be without crews when the system is fully tested.
Another article in the same issue tells about the Vancouver rapid transit system. Evidently the Vancouver system has been run with any train crew members for several years. There have been no accidents to date and the trains run on very short headways.
Amazon just opened a store in Seattle without any checkout people. Checkout and billing is all done through the Amazon app on a smart phone.
It is hard to see where future jobs are going to come from. This same issue was faced at the start of the industrial revolution and for most of the world things worked out better. Trains put stage coaches and horse stables out of business but created more and better paying jobs than coach building or raising horses ever did.
NH Joe
Here is a new link on Railway Gazette news for another milestone for the driverless trains in Australia, that was just approved by the Australian Rail Safety Regulator.
http://www.railwaygazette.com/...trains-approved.html
Automated trains, automated autos and automated everything make us the servants of the automated universe we have designed to serve ourselves. SciFi films have predicted this outcome for generations and, like Brave New World, the warning goes unheeded.
The market operates regardless of economic system, it just takes longer to operate under socialism and communism because of the higher level of market interference. Like Essau selling his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of soup, we are selling our birthright of freedom daily for cheaper and cheaper luxuries bought on credit that further enslave us financially, morally and, soon, physically because we will be able to do nothing for ourselves that is related directly to our survival.
Free Market Capitalism? We don't got no steenkin' free market capitalism. The Federal Reserve, which is owned by the banks, controls the "money" (currency) supply and manipulates the interest rate, the interest rate effects credit, credit effects the state of the economy, the state of the economy effects the level of confidence and confidence is what makes the economic world go 'round. God help us, please!
Rio Pinto is a single commodity, mostly about 1000 miles of track in sparsely/non populated areas. This makes things relatively easy to automate as it's an over-glorified conveyor belt: Loads to the ports/empties to the mines.
The automation parameters would be quite different on the likes of the BNSF racetrack between Chicago and Aurora. If a drone train pasted a car or pedestrian (and would it even stop if it hit a pedestrian??) anywhere along the line there would be an uproar about unmanned trains.
Rusty
Rusty Traque posted:Rio Pinto is a single commodity, mostly about 1000 miles of track in sparsely/non populated areas. This makes things relatively easy to automate as it's an over-glorified conveyor belt: Loads to the ports/empties to the mines.
The automation parameters would be quite different on the likes of the BNSF racetrack between Chicago and Aurora. If a drone train pasted a car or pedestrian (and would it even stop if it hit a pedestrian??) anywhere along the line there would be an uproar about unmanned trains.
Rusty
I agree with what you said about the remote location that these automated trains run on but if they are successful, & companies build upon such success, what argument would any resident or politician have in blocking these trains in Chicago or Aurora other than the fear of the unknown, some gut feeling that things could go wrong?
Driverless cars & commercial trucks are not perfect. Some of the fears you brought up regarding trains could also apply to these road vehicles. Yet, some states in the US have legalized their testing on public roads & there appears to be no plans to roll back any approvals even after the Uber accident in Arizona. BNSF could draw upon the success or precedent set by automated trains in arguing in favor of their implementation in the US. Maybe start on a small scale, in a similarly remote location to get the foot through the door & then railroad the system-wide implementation.
These are just my opinion,
Naveen
Like anything else, companies look to reduce costs and/or increase efficiency with almost anything. Automated train control has been with us for a while, several major metros and subways are run via automatic controls, the human operator is a backup only in an emergency. For a route like this, that is really rural/unpopulated, where there isn't a lot of sophisticated things going on, it might make sense to have it fully automated, if the train starts operating weird they can easily shut it down via a satellite link if need be.
Obviously there are a lot of issues around driverless trains (or cars), as is being shown in current tests no matter how sophisticated the technology is there is the potential for problems. With cars the accidents that have occurred often are because human drivers don't necessarily drive rationally or by the rules, which the cars do, and they don't have the ability to react to that easily, and there have been some cases recently that were just downright computer error, couldn't handle the situation. One of the things that is going to slow down driverless cars and technology is going to be liability, even if driverless vehicles show the same or lower rates of accidents than human drivers, the minute there is an accident involving driverless vehicles, especially ones that create fatalities, it is going to be big news and people are going to jump all over it, pointing out that driverless vehicles are dangerous, shouldn't be on the roads (meanwhile, it could be on a per thousand mile basis driverless cars have a tiny fraction of the deaths of human driven ones, wouldn't matter). It is kind of like airplane travel, it has one of the lowest safety/fatality rates of any form of transport on any kind of basis, per 1000 miles, etc, yet the minute an airplane crash happens people wonder if they are safe, all kinds of noise is made...meanwhile 35000 people a year die in automobile accidents (and just think of the bad PR sharks have, they kill maybe 7, 8 people a year, but you would think they kill millions...).
I am not that sure if pure driverless vehicles will become the norm, in the sense for example of trucks and trains with no human operators, if it won't become more like a kind of auto pilot where the human operator for those long, boring stretches of open road lets the computer do it, but in more densely packed, crazy situations they take over, the way that driverless cars require that a human be in the drivers seat and ready to take over quickly if need be (in at least one of the recent fatal accidents, the cars owner was in the passenger seat, which is against the rules). Having automated control in rural areas would likely allow a longer day (in theory in the middle of the nevada desert or in places like Wyoming and Montana a human driver could sleep). Among other things, as I mentioned above, the fear of vicarious liability with a fully automated vehicle or train ie the idea that no matter how safe automated vehicles are they will always be the bogeyman, and will therefore generate much larger awards from Juries then if it were a human operated accident. Companies love to save money and getting rid of labor makes the stock analyst gods smile big time, but fear of liability and political pressure is likely to limit for at least the near future how much is going to be allowed to happen.
News from Railway Gazette
Rio Tinto has further expanded its autonomous freight train operations.
A railway in Japan has begun autonomous train testing, after-hours on a busy passenger commuter train route.
I couldn’t help notice that in both instances, the infrastructure is being made more secure because of these advancements, like either eliminating railroad crossings or making the crossing more secure by monitoring with cameras which would also benefit old-fashioned train operations using drivers / engineers.
These are just my opinion,
Naveen
Companies, like people, want to obtain what they need or want, as cheaply as possible. People spend their personal money in the most cost effective (for them) possible way. Companies have even more incentive to do this, it is called competition. If a company cannot keep its costs in the same ballpark as other companies in the same business, people stop buying its product - it goes bankrupt, or out of business. This is similar to death for human being, the company ceases to exist.
This effort to continually reduce costs by companies has lead to cheaper products affordable to more people. Think about good old Henry Ford and the Model T. He took a product that was custom built one at a time and was a plaything for the very rich and mass-produced it in a factory thus reducing costs an order of magnitude - to make affordable by the very workers who built it. Based his efforts, the "common man' could now afford a motor car.
"Think about good old Henry Ford and the Model T. He took a product that was custom built one at a time and was a plaything for the very rich and mass-produced it in a factory thus reducing costs an order of magnitude - to make affordable by the very workers who built it. Based his efforts, the "common man' could now afford a motor car."
While that is very true, it leaves something out, something very, very important. Mass production made building cars efficient enough that they could afford to sell the cars at lower prices (the more units you build, the cheaper they are to make/unit, the less waste from hand made parts, etc). However, the other half of that was Henry Ford introduced the 5 dollar a day wage, which the other manufacturers were not very happy about,that stimulated demand for the product, had he not paid that kind of wage his workers wouldn't be able to buy it..and by raising the wages, he caused other manufacturers to do the same thing, and those people could buy the products...without demand, who are you building the goods? In turn, the assembly line created demand for parts, that generated jobs in other places, that increased demand for the products. The problem with automation is that it is taking away a lot more jobs than it creates, especially with AI that self repairing machines are becoming a reality, and the design of these systems, the maintainence and support and upgrades, which generally would create well paying jobs, is creating fewer of them, and that is a reality; the industrial revolution got rid of craft jobs, weavers, metalworkers, blacksmiths, barrel makers (who used to make the rims for cars from wood), but replaces them with millions of factory workers, it is different. The fundamental question is, with automation taking more and more jobs, who is going to buy the goods and services the companies produce? I am no luddite, I work in the securities industry where a lot of jobs have been replaced by computer systems (clearing stocks and bonds was labor intensive as heck, used to have a week settlement period, today they are settled in a matter of seconds, even though officially doesn't happen for 3 days, clearing checks was tedious and time consuming, today it is pretty much instantaneous), but it is a question few are asking, let alone answering it, and that efficiency of manufacturing is being passed on to a much smaller group of people than it was with the industrial revolution.
Companies don't just go out of business because someone makes something cheaper than them, companies go out of business when there aren't people who can afford their product, too, it was one of the structural problems that caused the 1929 crash, companies in the 1920's, flush with cash from selling stock, used it to expand factories, but because that stock wealth wasn't reflected in worker salaries, they expanded production into demand that didn't exist (there were a lot of other causes, but this was one of the biggies).
Saw this article on Railway Gazette about this company that is experimenting with machine vision systems for high speed passenger trains, as part of the push towards fully autonomous trains.
Machine vision to support autonomous trains
These are just my opinion,
Thanks,
Naveen
