Separating Autonomous Containers From Autonomous Mobility Platforms

You may have noticed that the illustrations show Autonomous Vehicles separated into an Autonomous Container and a Mobility Platform.

One motivation for this design is the incredible success of standardized Intermodal Containers in revolutionizing the transport of goods around the world. A Cargo Container can be loaded at a factory, move from the factory on a truck, to a railroad car, to a ship, to another railroad car, to a truck, to a store or warehouse rather than being unpacked and repacked at each transfer. This revolutionized shipping and is a major factor in the rapid spread of globalization.  For more information see my blog post 44 July 3, 2013 Separating the Mobility Platform from the A-Carrier. There are over 20 million standard Intermodal Containers, carrying 60% of seaborne trade. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container Accessed 5/7/2016] Unfortunately, most Cargo Containers today are not reused because of the cost of moving them to a place needing to ship them. Reusability is a key feature of these Containers. 

There are several other motivations for this separation for our transportation system: the growing diversity of needs for Autonomous Containers, the diversity of transportation modes, and the rapid evolution of transportation technologies. Also when stacking Containers inside other Containers, requiring the Mobility functions to be included takes up space and weight, making the overall system less efficient. There are situations when it is advantageous to have a Mobility Platform to move Containers inside other Containers, and we will examine this useful option in detail shortly.

The Autonomous Container is optimized for the needs of the contents: size, weight, insulated, heated, cooled, corrosion resistant, pressure resistant, washable, sterilizable, protecting fragile items, and a host of other needs that will continue emerge as new applications are innovated. Today most of these needs are provided by hand delivery of disposable containers and packing material: cardboard boxes, styrofoam containers, paper, peanuts, bubble wrap, and impossible to open plastic packaging. These add cost, labor, weight, and bulk to everything that is shipped, and then must be disposed of in our mountains of trash. Reusable Containers solve these problems. When a delivery is complete, the Container is taken to appropriate processing, e.g., cleaning, and then sent on to the next delivery.

The Mobility Platform is optimized for the characteristics of the transport mode: size, speed, range, weight, road surface, tire type, steel wheels on steel rails, air cushion, maglev, or even conventional rubber tires to travel on existing roads. Or the Mobility Platform could be a drone, as Amazon is proposing. Today small containers are moved by hand, hand truck, and some conveyor belts in airports, and then thrown together into trucks and cars. Our Autonomous Mobility Platforms will carry these more efficiently, economically, and safely.

If instead we insisted the Container and the Mobility Platform form a merged Vehicle, then we need different Vehicles to meet all those needs for both different contents and different transportation modes, essentially multiplying the two different types of needs, which is expensive, inefficient, and leads to shortages of the type of vehicle when and where you need it.

Here is a sample of a 12”x12”x12” Container carrying 6 smaller 12”x12”x2” Containers. The smaller Containers could hold documents, books, or personal pan pizzas. Note even though containers may have the same external size, their internal dimensions might be different. For example, the 12” x 12” x 2” tall container could be nearly the same size inside for books and documents, while for carrying a hot personal pan pizza, there is insulation inside each surface, making the interior less than 2 inches tall. If the pizza container is not insulated and sealed, you wouldn’t want it to be next to a Container with documents or books because the heat, humidity, and aroma from the pizza might infiltrate the paper. Of course the document Containers will be sealed as well, and some of them might even be insulated against humidity and even fire for very valuable documents. The Containers will only open for the authorized recipient – we’ll talk about security mechanisms shortly.

The sample Mobility Platform shown is designed to carry this cubic container without adding significantly to the height or width, so the A-Way does not have to be significantly larger.

Here is a set of Applications, and potential standard Container sizes to carry them: Length, Width, and Height in inches, and Volume in Pints. The green shaded cells show how many Containers of a given size would fit in larger containers. The blue shaded areas show that all of these containers would fit in an A-Way only somewhat larger than 1’ Wide and 1’ High.

Here is another set of Applications for larger potential standard Container sizes to carry them: Length, Width, and Height in feet, and Volume in cubic-feet. The green shaded cells show how many Containers of a given size would fit in larger containers. The purple shaded areas show that all of these containers would fit in an A-Way somewhat larger than 3’ Wide and 5’ High. 

You may be wondering why I call the Containers “Autonomous”. Even though the Containers do not move by themselves, they need to perform many functions for their contents. We have already mentioned insulating, heating, and cooling, but there are many other important functions. For example, some Contents need monitoring for characteristics such as temperature, and pressure. Some Contents will need to be provided with power and communications.  We need to track the location of Containers and their Contents, to be sure that they are not lost, stolen, or tampered with during transit. Standard interfaces will provide for these functions.  These topics are more technical than the main thread of this narrative, but I have addressed them in earlier posts, and will address them later. For example, we will describe a Command, Control, Communications, and Computing architecture, abbreviated C⁴, and pronounced “See Fourth” J, and a system of implementing all this processing and storage that we call “Cloudlet Computing”.

Autonomous Containers, Autonomous Mobility Platforms, and even Contents, can connect using a set of standard interfaces. The standards specify sizes, methods of securing two units together, passing power and communications, and other services, such as heating, cooling, and airflow. The standards also include testing mechanisms to assure that the connections, the Containers, and the Mobility Platforms are functioning properly, and what to do if a failure or other problem is detected. For example, a Container or Mobility Platform might be overheating, or drawing too much current, or sending an error message. The communications will also connect to the outside world to summon assistance. We will talk about methods for this in the sections on A-Ways.