【龙腾网】你瞧，没有手！无人驾驶汽车驶上“疯狂汽车秀”的车道

正文翻译

Look, no hands!

你瞧，没有手！

A driverless lorry takes on the “Top Gear” track

无人驾驶汽车驶上“疯狂汽车秀”的车道

It is ready to start earning a living

准备开始自力更生

Thanks to “Top Gear”, a British television show for motoring enthusiasts that is now a global brand, a former second-world-war airfield called Dunsfold has become one of the best known testing tracks in the world. On October 15th, however, instead of reverberating to the roar of supercars driven by the show’s anonymous racing driver, the Stig, it witnessed the sight of what appeared to be the cabless trailer of an articulated lorry belting almost silently around the course at over 80kph.

多亏了“疯狂汽车秀”这档面向汽车爱好者、享誉全球的英国电视节目，二战使用的“敦斯福德”机场已成为世界最知名的试车场之一。但10月15日这天，场上没有匿名赛车手“试替哥”驾驶超级跑车发出的咆哮，而是像被铰接式货车牵引的无电缆挂车，以80公里以上的时速几乎悄无声息地绕着车道飞驰。

The Pod (see picture), as this vehicle is known, was made by Einride, a Swedish firm founded in 2016 by Robert Falck, an engineer who used to work for Volvo. Mr Falck thinks that the technology of vehicle autonomy, long experimental, has now evolved sufficiently for driverless goods vehicles to begin earning their livings properly. Some Pods are already in trials for real jobs: running between warehouses, hauling logs from forests and delivering goods for Lidl, a supermarket group.

这辆车名为“波德”，由瑞典公司Einride制造，工程师罗伯特·法尔克在2016年创立了这家公司，他曾在沃尔沃公司工作。法尔克先生认为，经过长期试验的汽车自主化技术足以使无人驾驶货车开始自力更生。有些“波德”已被试用于实际工作：奔走于仓库之间，从森林运回木材，为超市集团Lidl送货。

The second difference from most other attempts at vehicle autonomy is Einride’s approach to the word “autonomy”. Some makers take the idea literally, and aim to keep humans out of the decision-making loop entirely. Others, often prompted by traffic regulations, arrange things so that a normally passive human occupant can take the controls if necessary. Pods represent a third way. They always have a human in the loop to keep an eye on what is happening and to take over the driving for a difficult manoeuvre or if something goes wrong. But this human operates remotely.

Einride公司在实现车辆“自主性”的方法上也与多数制造商不同。有些制造商从字面理解“自主性”，旨在将人类完全排除在决策之外。其他制造商往往在交通法规的驱使下进行安排，通常保持被动的人类驾驶员在必要时接手控制。“波德”采取了第三种方式，由人类全程参与决策，密切关注实时状况，接手困难的操控或处理差错，但驾驶员是从远程操控的。

Having the driver sitting back at hq rather than in the vehicle itself is a departure from convention, but not a huge one. Aerial drones are usually controlled in this way. The radical step is that Mr Falck believes you do not need a remote driver for each Pod. Einride already uses one person to control two Pods, but plans eventually for a single driver to look after ten.

驾驶员坐在总部而不是车内是有悖于惯例的做法，但并不严重。空中无人机通常采取这种操纵方式。激进的是福尔克先生认为，无需为每台“波德”配一名遥控驾驶员。目前，Einride公司使用一人操纵两辆“波德”，最终计划由一名驾驶员监控十辆“波德”。