I couldn’t post to the normal thread. I think I have been blocked. If these autonomous trucks are so simple and safe, why have trains got a driver?
£50k when you could get a Hungarian to sit there for 13 bob a week
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Why? Same reason planes have pilots. They might be willing to let a robot kill one or two people but draw a line at them killing 300.
I’m guessing their unions have something to do with it. Look at the furore over the single manned trains.
Wheel Nut:
I couldn’t post to the normal thread. I think I have been blocked. If these autonomous trucks are so simple and safe, why have trains got a driver?
£50k when you could get a Hungarian to sit there for 13 bob a weekSent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Simple and safe■■? Certainly not simple but working well on safety. In the end they will be far far safer than humans.
Captain Caveman 76:
I’m guessing their unions have something to do with it. Look at the furore over the single manned trains.
exactly - Rig Tag & Bobtail will just roll over and get their big fat tummies tickled.
the maoster:
Why? Same reason planes have pilots. They might be willing to let a robot kill one or two people but draw a line at them killing 300.
Come on maoster I am sure you know planes more or less fly themselves these days. There have also been many flights without pilots although not with passengers. Yet.
Wheel Nut:
I couldn’t post to the normal thread. I think I have been blocked. If these autonomous trucks are so simple and safe, why have trains got a driver?
£50k when you could get a Hungarian to sit there for 13 bob a weekSent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Also there are more and more trains with no drivers in case you have not noticed. Do people use them? Yes of course.
Pretty sure that 10 years ago when we sent two of these type of vehicles to Mars , that we can certainly send a truck to Tesco without too much difficulty. Look at some of the drivers on here, I would argue that this technology has not stopped in development.
UKtramp:
Pretty sure that 10 years ago when we sent two of these type of vehicles to Mars , that we can certainly send a truck to Tesco without too much difficulty. Look at some of the drivers on here, I would argue that this technology has not stopped in development.
Far from stopped UKT. It is accerlerating at great knots something a lot on here do not want to believe. I cannot fully understand why some will not accept the facts. I would love and may well read the comments on here in 20 years or less to see how the conversation is going. 
Dr Damon:
UKtramp:
Pretty sure that 10 years ago when we sent two of these type of vehicles to Mars , that we can certainly send a truck to Tesco without too much difficulty. Look at some of the drivers on here, I would argue that this technology has not stopped in development.Far from stopped UKT. It is accerlerating at great knots something a lot on here do not want to believe. I cannot fully understand why some will not accept the facts. I would love and may well read the comments on here in 20 years or less to see how the conversation is going.
A lot of it is denial through fear, some just think the future is simply an auto box or auto screen wipers. I have worked in automation myself, not vehicular automation but some pretty startling advances. I can log onto and actually view the whole plant of a cold store in Amman in Jordan and view the compressors and all of the controls through their SCADA system. I can make adjustments without even been there, I do this for a lot of cold stores, now 10 years ago I would be flying out to diagnose the problems.
UKtramp:
A lot of it is denial through fear, some just think the future is simply an auto box or auto screen wipers. I have worked in automation myself, not vehicular automation but some pretty startling advances. I can log onto and actually view the whole plant of a cold store in Amman in Jordan and view the compressors and all of the controls through their SCADA system. I can make adjustments without even been there, I do this for a lot of cold stores, now 10 years ago I would be flying out to diagnose the problems.
Your description is more remote working isn’t it? Would an autonomous plant actually divert/by pass a problem area diagnose the problem and issue the “job sheet” to the technician (be it human or robot)?
Wiretwister:
UKtramp:
A lot of it is denial through fear, some just think the future is simply an auto box or auto screen wipers. I have worked in automation myself, not vehicular automation but some pretty startling advances. I can log onto and actually view the whole plant of a cold store in Amman in Jordan and view the compressors and all of the controls through their SCADA system. I can make adjustments without even been there, I do this for a lot of cold stores, now 10 years ago I would be flying out to diagnose the problems.Your description is more remote working isn’t it? Would an autonomous plant actually divert/by pass a problem area diagnose the problem and issue the “job sheet” to the technician (be it human or robot)?
No the whole plant is now automated to start and stop as well as diagnose itself and shutdown compressors, close valves etc, etc, we receive texts as to what it is doing and we can log in and diagnose and repair faults, in respect to the point of turning on and off any part of the plant, if a valve goes faulty then we send someone out to replace it. The point is that none of this was possible years ago. I still find it fascinating even today, we solve problems before anyone is even aware of there being one most times. We ring up the plant manager to get it checked after we have done our alterations. It means the plant only needs to employ a couple of engineers on site and we can advise the engineers over the phone on what to do in the event of breakdowns. We had to be on site to do this years ago.
UKtramp:
Wiretwister:
UKtramp:
A lot of it is denial through fear, some just think the future is simply an auto box or auto screen wipers. I have worked in automation myself, not vehicular automation but some pretty startling advances. I can log onto and actually view the whole plant of a cold store in Amman in Jordan and view the compressors and all of the controls through their SCADA system. I can make adjustments without even been there, I do this for a lot of cold stores, now 10 years ago I would be flying out to diagnose the problems.Your description is more remote working isn’t it? Would an autonomous plant actually divert/by pass a problem area diagnose the problem and issue the “job sheet” to the technician (be it human or robot)?
No the whole plant is now automated to start and stop as well as diagnose itself and shutdown compressors, close valves etc, etc, we receive texts as to what it is doing and we can log in and diagnose and repair faults, in respect to the point of turning on and off any part of the plant, if a valve goes faulty then we send someone out to replace it. The point is that none of this was possible years ago. I still find it fascinating even today, we solve problems before anyone is even aware of there being one most times. We ring up the plant manager to get it checked after we have done our alterations. It means the plant only needs to employ a couple of engineers on site and we can advise the engineers over the phone on what to do in the event of breakdowns. We had to be on site to do this years ago.
Similar to my son in the telecoms industry then. When on call he covers 5 sites & will often go to the nearest site & interrogate the system from there. One of his biggest problems are sensors giving false alarms. Last time we had a conversation it was in the order of 15 - 20% of all reports.
UKtramp:
Dr Damon:
UKtramp:
Pretty sure that 10 years ago when we sent two of these type of vehicles to Mars , that we can certainly send a truck to Tesco without too much difficulty. Look at some of the drivers on here, I would argue that this technology has not stopped in development.Far from stopped UKT. It is accerlerating at great knots something a lot on here do not want to believe. I cannot fully understand why some will not accept the facts. I would love and may well read the comments on here in 20 years or less to see how the conversation is going.
A lot of it is denial through fear, some just think the future is simply an auto box or auto screen wipers. I have worked in automation myself, not vehicular automation but some pretty startling advances. I can log onto and actually view the whole plant of a cold store in Amman in Jordan and view the compressors and all of the controls through their SCADA system. I can make adjustments without even been there, I do this for a lot of cold stores, now 10 years ago I would be flying out to diagnose the problems.
Even SCADA is becoming old hat nowadays and gradually replaced with IoT as data streams are becoming ever larger and hacking more prevalent. Even PLC archicteture is moving toward nodal connection as communications get faster and more reliable.
Anyone remember STUXNET?
Wiretwister:
Similar to my son in the telecoms industry then. When on call he covers 5 sites & will often go to the nearest site & interrogate the system from there. One of his biggest problems are sensors giving false alarms. Last time we had a conversation it was in the order of 15 - 20% of all reports.
Sensors do go wrong a lot and can be a real problem, a faulty sensor is dangerous to override in refrigeration as we could potentially be setting off a bomb with ammonia if we get it wrong. We find probably a similar percentage in sensors going wrong or out of calibration. We cover around 15 sites worldwide that we have either designed or commissioned, far easier today to cover sites this way.
UKtramp:
Wiretwister:
Similar to my son in the telecoms industry then. When on call he covers 5 sites & will often go to the nearest site & interrogate the system from there. One of his biggest problems are sensors giving false alarms. Last time we had a conversation it was in the order of 15 - 20% of all reports.Sensors do go wrong a lot and can be a real problem, a faulty sensor is dangerous to override in refrigeration as we could potentially be setting off a bomb with ammonia if we get it wrong. We find probably a similar percentage in sensors going wrong or out of calibration. We cover around 15 sites worldwide that we have either designed or commissioned, far easier today to cover sites this way.
Agreed, but in such a critical application would it not be prudent to design in a redundent system for if/when the primary fails and impliment in to the suparvisery control?
AndieHyde:
UKtramp:
Dr Damon:
UKtramp:
Pretty sure that 10 years ago when we sent two of these type of vehicles to Mars , that we can certainly send a truck to Tesco without too much difficulty. Look at some of the drivers on here, I would argue that this technology has not stopped in development.Far from stopped UKT. It is accerlerating at great knots something a lot on here do not want to believe. I cannot fully understand why some will not accept the facts. I would love and may well read the comments on here in 20 years or less to see how the conversation is going.
A lot of it is denial through fear, some just think the future is simply an auto box or auto screen wipers. I have worked in automation myself, not vehicular automation but some pretty startling advances. I can log onto and actually view the whole plant of a cold store in Amman in Jordan and view the compressors and all of the controls through their SCADA system. I can make adjustments without even been there, I do this for a lot of cold stores, now 10 years ago I would be flying out to diagnose the problems.
Even SCADA is becoming old hat nowadays and gradually replaced with IoT as data streams are becoming ever larger and hacking more prevalent. Even PLC archicteture is moving toward nodal connection as communications get faster and more reliable.
Anyone remember STUXNET?
SCADA in refrigeration is not a very high risk area for hacking to be honest, we use siemens S7 for hardware and usually the interface is Wonderware which we have quite secure. Everything is backed up and ready to reload in the event of a hacker. We always use a VPN tunnel for secure connections so nothing is really open to public lines. I can see normal SCADA systems not been very secure though in a lot of places.Ours have to be though, usually employ IT services to secure everything unless the plant have their own which is quite usual.
AndieHyde:
UKtramp:
Wiretwister:
Similar to my son in the telecoms industry then. When on call he covers 5 sites & will often go to the nearest site & interrogate the system from there. One of his biggest problems are sensors giving false alarms. Last time we had a conversation it was in the order of 15 - 20% of all reports.Sensors do go wrong a lot and can be a real problem, a faulty sensor is dangerous to override in refrigeration as we could potentially be setting off a bomb with ammonia if we get it wrong. We find probably a similar percentage in sensors going wrong or out of calibration. We cover around 15 sites worldwide that we have either designed or commissioned, far easier today to cover sites this way.
Agreed, but in such a critical application would it not be prudent to design in a redundent system for if/when the primary fails and impliment in to the suparvisery control?
There is a lot of redundancy built in during the design stage for critical cover, an example is we designed a cold store in Israel where we placed 6 compressors running in lead and lag with two on standby at all times, ammonia pumps have redundancy. There is a massive cost increase with redundancy as these compressors run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. Problem been with redundancy is you would need to build two cold stores to ensure one keeps running, obviously this is not possible or feasible, so critical parts redundancy is our best method.
UKtramp:
AndieHyde:
UKtramp:
Wiretwister:
Similar to my son in the telecoms industry then. When on call he covers 5 sites & will often go to the nearest site & interrogate the system from there. One of his biggest problems are sensors giving false alarms. Last time we had a conversation it was in the order of 15 - 20% of all reports.Sensors do go wrong a lot and can be a real problem, a faulty sensor is dangerous to override in refrigeration as we could potentially be setting off a bomb with ammonia if we get it wrong. We find probably a similar percentage in sensors going wrong or out of calibration. We cover around 15 sites worldwide that we have either designed or commissioned, far easier today to cover sites this way.
Agreed, but in such a critical application would it not be prudent to design in a redundent system for if/when the primary fails and impliment in to the suparvisery control?
There is a lot of redundancy built in during the design stage for critical cover, an example is we designed a cold store in Israel where we placed 6 compressors running in lead and lag with two on standby at all times, ammonia pumps have redundancy. There is a massive cost increase with redundancy as these compressors run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. Problem been with redundancy is you would need to build two cold stores to ensure one keeps running, obviously this is not possible or feasible, so critical parts redundancy is our best method.
Was meaning more from the data acquisition point of view of the sensors in having a primary and secondary fail safe. When a $100000 compressor fails for a $20 sensor but I see where your coming from.
In economies of scale, keeping millions of produce cool in desert climes a spare unit kept for the just in case would pay for itself in the first time it was brought online.
AndieHyde:
Was meaning more from the data acquisition point of view of the sensors in having a primary and secondary fail safe. When a $100000 compressor fails for a $20 sensor but I see where your coming from.
In economies of scale, keeping millions of produce cool in desert climes a spare unit kept for the just in case would pay for itself in the first time it was brought online.
The compressors need rebuilding and servicing at regular intervals, this can take days to do, the redundant compressors are run during this service which certainly pays dividends. Many times for one reason or another the redundant compressors do come into play and certainly pay for themselves, we haven’t lost a cold store yet but had some very hair raising experiences that has resulted in losing them for a few hours which is worrying. The data acquisition is normally not a concern for us to be fair in refrigeration as we know from experience and from other sensors where problems lay. Plus on an average recip or screw compressor we can have 15 to 20 sensors. If we added redundancy on these we could easily fox ourselves.