When this time comes, the problem will be sabotage/theft. I think this will be a problem with all autonomous vehicle technologies, and it's often neglected in conversations on the subject.
Imagine you get to the point of perfectly autonomous trucks. They are designed to never harm a human, so they can be stopped dead by somebody simply standing in the road (while his accomplices unload the cargo).
When you need to hire a security guard to accompany every truck, the cost savings of self-driving vehicles don't look so good.
This hypothetical comes up seemingly every time autonomous vehicles are mentioned. Theft is already illegal, we have a framework in place to deter theft by prosecuting it when it does happen and then punishing those guilty. All the truck needs to do is take a picture of the criminals and phone home, something it almost certainly can do already.
Theft is already a problem for everyone, like any behavior we attempt to control it using incentives. I don't see how a vehicle that knows exactly where it is, doesn't get tired, can look in multiple directions at once and doesn't forget details under stress or fatigue is somehow a more appealing target than an underpaid employee doing a demanding job.
The argument can be made that shrinkage will actually decrease with the advent of automated delivery vehicles just because it's so easy to collect evidence and there's less opportunity for internal theft.
Drivers also get robbed of corse. In the automated delivery world we will have less crime against individuals and a equal or better chance of catching those who do steal from the trucks.
How are we protecting human-driven trucks right now?
They are equally easy to stop (simply standing in the road works just as well) and are even easier to take control of (one can always put a gun to driver's head and ask him to hand over the keys - thieves won't be able to pull this trick on a robot).
This is a massive over-simplification. Imagine a human driver encounters somebody standing in the road on an otherwise empty highway.
Experience will tell him how much to slow down, whether to swerve around the obstacle, edge past slowly or stop altogether. All the time he'll be making judgements based on the appearance of the person, the surroundings, etc.
If the person seems malicious he knows just how fast to drive to intimidate them into getting out of the way, without undue risk. He doesn't want to kill anyone, even if they're trying to rob him.
Now imagine encoding all of that into an algorithm. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's a huge challenge.
Also bear in mind that autonomous vehicles will probably err very much on the side of caution when it comes to pedestrian safety.
I think that the psychological option holds a lot of promise. At least, it plays to our strengths of big data, analytics and centrally controlled social networks.
Security guard? Sensors, cameras, alarms etc would be fitted and sufficient to deter most thieves. The truck would sound an alarm and even notify police automatically if it detects unauthorised unloading.
You really think so? Sure, in an urban environment cameras and alarms might work.
But good luck protecting a truck on an open highway miles away from the nearest town.
HN conversations about autonomous vehicles are normally focussed on the technical hurdles of getting a car to drive and navigate autonomously. Maybe I'm cynical, but I think dealing with the actions of humans outside the vehicle will be a challenge of at least equal size.
I'd say the problem is even worse in an urban environment. Nobody, including police, will pay any attention to those alarms.
Autonomous trucks will end up having armed androids.
The likely model initially is for trucks to run autonomously on highways for the long-haul part of the route, then have a human driver take over for the "last mile" of a delivery to an urban area.
The reason isn't so much security but rather that autonomous urban driving is a more difficult problem to solve.
The idea of roaming gangs holding up autonomous trucks might make a good plot for a sci-fi movie, but in the real world it probably isn't as big a problem as we imagine.
Most of these things are going to contain pretty mundane shipments. If you're shipping currency or gold bullion or iPhones then sure, maybe more security would be appropriate.
Just have it phone home with a video feed when it stops unexpectedly and have someone look at it and call the police. It might actually be easier because you can just have video and sensors and call the police immediately if someone tries to steal anything.
Imagine you get to the point of perfectly autonomous trucks. They are designed to never harm a human, so they can be stopped dead by somebody simply standing in the road (while his accomplices unload the cargo).
When you need to hire a security guard to accompany every truck, the cost savings of self-driving vehicles don't look so good.