Professional: Self-driving trailers are already a thing. They are not legal on public roads, but they work just fine in warehouses and yards. The way it works, a dolly is hooked up to the front of the trailer, and the yard master just instructs it where to go and park, and forgets about it. Thanks to the trailer sensors, the trailer is also able to navigate around fairly heavy yard traffic, which is far more complex than linear traffic on roads. The EU is being lobbied to allow the trailers on the roads. The EU is also being lobbied to increase the max length of a tractor-trailer from 27m to 50m. The new road trains are also using these autonomous engines and steering directly on trailers. We estimate that by 2035, we’ll start seeing a drastic reduction of demand for truck drivers.
Hobby: This is unconfirmed, just an odd thing I started noticing. In some places, in particular around US embassies, modern cameras are blocked from taking photos, and older models are being interfered with through green lasers. I noticed the latter when I tested with the first gen Gopro Hero and a 15 years old Canon. Need to dig out my film camera to see whether it has any impact there.
modern cameras are blocked from taking photos
Really? That’s interesting. I wonder what the technology is that they’re using to detect cameras in the first place. When I think of a DSLR for example, it’s a passive sensor that’s only receiving photons but it’s not sending anything outwards. Some phones have laser autofocus so that I imagine could be detected but even that’s quite rare technology on phones.
This is just pure speculation, but I think the firmware on the camera refuses to take pictures when its GPS detects it to be in a restricted area. That’s how higher-end drones work. At the same spot where I detected my interference, a DJI drone would refuse to take off. Drone no-fly areas are well documented (and advertisef), though, so it was easy to check against those.
But surely a 15 year old Canon don’t have a GPS on it? I just can’t think of what technology they could use to detect someone taking a picture in order to interfere with it other than camera surveillance and some sort of an AI system to detect cameras. I’m not doubting you, just curious about how it could possibly work and especially how to evade it.
