A Robo-Car Just Drove Across the Country

Press2ToContinue writes with this news from Wired: Nine days after leaving San Francisco, a blue car packed with tech from a company you've probably never heard of rolled into New York City after crossing 15 states and 3,400 miles to make history. The car did 99 percent of the driving on its own, yielding to the carbon-based life form behind the wheel only when it was time to leave the highway and hit city streets. This amazing feat, by the automotive supplier Delphi, underscores the great leaps this technology has taken in recent years, and just how close it is to becoming a part of our lives. Yes, many regulatory and legislative questions must be answered, and it remains to be seen whether consumers are ready to cede control of their cars, but the hardware is, without doubt, up to the task." That last one percent is a bear, though.

Comments

I wonder

[justthinkit]

I wonder what long distance truck drivers are thinking right about now.

Re:I wonder

[slack_justyb]

Most truck drivers already know the writing is on the wall. The older ones could not care less, they'll be off the road for good before there is enough states stitched together to make any usable routes. The younger ones don't care either, they barely like their job to begin with and anything that makes their life less stressful all the better.

And all of that cycles around the fact that it'll be a long time before someone in some state's capital let's 80,000 pounds just roll down the road unsupervised. Most truck drivers are pretty convinced that their jobs will just turn into watching a machine roll down the road, and sign the paperwork when that machine runs into something.

Also, besides the obvious state law stuff that needs to get passed. Security will need to be addressed as well. There already is a problem with semis that are not automatic and they have a human watching the goods for a majority of the time. Imagine a semi just rolling down the street and someone decides to flatten the tires with a spike strip. Yeah, an alarm might go off, but the thieves will be long gone with the goods by the time anyone gets to the disabled machine.

Re:Also happened in 1995

[jaak]

The 1995 CMU vehicle was sponsored by Delco Electronics which, two years later, became part of Delphi (which engineered the car in this story).