As I was sitting down to lunch, the CEO of the Toronto Transit Commission, Andy Byford, was explaining why hundreds of thousands of Torontonians were stranded earlier that day when all subways were shut down.
The problem, it seems, was a power glitch caused their two uninterruptable power supplies (UPS) systems to kick in. These are systems that smooth out issues with electrical power and fill in any shortfalls with battery backup. I personally have two attached to this very computer I am typing on right now.
Those two UPS systems got confused, kept engaging and eventually ran their batteries dry. Communications failed, and you can’t run a subway without communications, so the entire system was shut down. Pretty good formula for chaos, methinks, as taxi drivers were in high demand and Uber drivers using “surge pricing,” or as some might say, “gouging,” made a killing.
Just before I saw this news story, an interesting piece appeared on the National Post website. It turns out Suncor, one of the preeminent oilsands producers in the Fort McMurray area, is moving towards driverless haul trucks. These are massive behemoths that can haul 400 tons at a time and travel up to 40 mph.
If Suncor fully implements this driverless approach, it would eliminate 800 jobs at $200,000 each year. That’s roughly $160 million saving each year and that goes a long way towards paying for the planned 175 driverless trucks. Turns out they don’t list a price for these that is easily found, but when you factor in a service life of several years, and multiply that by the $160 million in salary savings, the trucks nearly pay for themselves. Remember, for 24-hour operations, you need four to five people per position to cover days off, holidays and sick time. When each person is making $200,000 a year that adds up really quickly.
Self-driving machines are becoming much more prevalent. If you flew on an airliner in the last 10 years, odds are almost the entire flight, including the landing for some airplanes, were handled by autopilot.
Tractors these days have “autosteer.” It’s a revolutionary improvement where the GPS-guided tractor can drive perfect lines and only overlap inches on an air seeder 80 feet wide, effectively reducing overlap, and thus waste, to a rounding error. I know one farmer who reads his iPad between ends of the field. When the machine reaches the point where it’s time to turn around, the operator takes the wheel, makes the turn, and lets the tractor take over again.
The key point here is that in both the airliners and the tractor is there is a human being in the loop. If that tractor is about to drive into a pothole or a power pole, the driver can intercede, make a correction, and then let the machine continue. If something is not right with the plane, the pilots will take the yoke and put it down.
But that does not appear to be the case with what is proposed at Suncor, and presumably every other oilsands mine when they decide to follow suit. Here we have rolling iron the size of small apartment buildings. Even if there are sensors out the wazoo – radar, visual and otherwise – these sensors can and will fail at some point. Who gets crushed then? It will be impossible to have entirely people-free worksites, because you are still going to need support and supervisory personnel. Operators will still be running the loading shovels, at least for now.
That’s where the Toronto example is instructive. It was not the primary system, but the backup system, an ITS back up system, that failed, and caused the whole system to collapse.
Yes, certainly operator error does exist. There’s a reason some mines drive on the left hand side of the road. If two of these trucks have a head-on collision, which apparently happens, their left-side-mounted cabs will be crushed if driving on the right side, but likely spared if driving on the left.
I’m sure there were similar levels of discomfort with the growing capabilities of autopilot. Now it’s even used to land on aircraft carriers – the most dangerous feat of flying imaginable. They’ve just recently successfully landed a drone on a carrier, which means humans were not in the loop in the actual airframe. So these things can be done.
I just worry about any squished Newfies that could be the result, should things go wrong.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
