Keybaords misspell words

nooooooooooo!

I never trust those UPC scanners at the stores. Bring back Ethel from the 60's manually typing in the prices on the price stickers stuck to the products. That was way more accurate.

Driver assisted vehicles and technology to make cars and driving safer are already here. Sensors to alert you if you drift out of your lane, back up cameras, talking GPS rather than trying to read a map or atlas. These are stepping stones to a fully autonomous road vehicle.

Fully autonomous vehicles are not foreign in most modern day manufacturing plants. Back in the early 2000's I worked for a company that built a new plant on the former Ft. Devens land (after they shut down Ft. Devens, they turned it into a business/industrial park). We had a wire guided system embedded in the concrete floor that would guide a couple robot fork lift thingies along the paths to and from their docking station and the furnaces (think an invisible fence in your yard to keep your dog from wandering off). They had secondary guidance via lasers and radar in that would stop them in case an obstacle was left in their way. I'm not sure how well they worked out, I left before the plant was fully up and running.

The local WalMart has a robot floor washer about the size of a ride on lawn mower. It runs around the aisles fully independent cleaning the floor even when the store is open with customers wandering around. If it "sees" an obstruction, it stops, pauses and beeps. If the obstruction doesn't clear, it just shuts down.

On a smaller scale, many households have Roomba vacuums and floor moping robots that use the same basic premise of following a programmed path and avoiding obstacles.

These are not apple to apple comparisons when it comes to a fully autonomous car or truck but the basic idea is similar. There is more safety and liability at stake when it comes to driving on public roads at high speeds. With that said, I'd bet fully autonomous road vehicles (to some degree) will probably be common place before my kids die.

"With that said, I'd bet fully autonomous road vehicles (to some degree) will probably be common place before my kids die."


I believe it will be much sooner. There will be many exceptions but most of us will live to see it become common.

Way of the road, Bubs. Way. of. the. road.

They're already common place. Tesla owners use the feature incessantly.

And one Tesla owner ran headlong into an overturned semi for whatever reason it computed or lacked computation. My level of trust just isn't there yet

I'd agree, my level of trust ain't there yet either - I'm not sure it will be ever be there (fully autonomous) but that just might be me being old fashioned. The younger generation, I believe, are more accepting to new technology.

Fully automated in a closed environment like a manufacturing plant or store and moving along at a walking pace is one thing. On an open road at high speeds surrounded by other idiots at high speeds with changing weather, road, and traffic conditions is a whole different ball of wax. Not saying it can't be done or won't be done (I think it can and will) but it's kinda scary to me.

With that said, machines can and do make mistakes just like humans do. Given enough time, development, and built in safety factors I trust machines in being more reliable than humans for many tasks. Maybe driving from point A to point B will be one of those tasks eventually.

On a completely unrelated note, whenever I use or hear the word "eventually" the first thing that pops in my mind is this scene from Faulty Towers.

Twenty NINE!

Thats level 3 stuff. Driver has to be present and ready to take over. We have to get to level 5 to be fully autonomous.
I think we will see many cars with the ability to be driven with or without a human on demand in certain situations within the next decade. Prolly 1st will be low-speed delivery vehicles on surface streets.

Yeah, part of my distrust is age. I'm still mourning the near extinction of the manual transmission. Don't take my wheel and pedals now too

The other part is systems glitch and malfunction. It happens in automated factories. It happens with grocery scanners. It happens at friggin stop lights. I don't want to experience a glitch at 65mph or be on the road when someone else does

I agree that this might be the first stage of fully autonomous vehicles: final delivery to the consumer or also called the "last-mile" portion of the supply chain . It has some completely different challenges. The "last mile" is typically in urban environments. Although low speed, urban environments are more dynamic on a daily basis with city traffic, pedestrians, local detours... than long haul and highway portions of the supply chain. If they can master the last-mile part, then I think long haul will be next.

I would love to be able to buy a car which would warm itself up in the morning while I take a shower and grab a to-go coffee for the commute to work. Sit back and let it drive me while I sip on my coffee and listen to audio books. Plug it in when I get to work to recharge and do the reverse on the commute back home.

Again, on a unrelated note. In a previous job, one of the engineers had a Prius for a commuter car. He'd park it in back by the loading dock and run an extension cord out to recharge it while at work. Alex, the shipping and receiving manager, came up with a good one (wish I thought of this). We paged the Prius owner to the loading dock. We told him that we noticed that his car was leaking oil or something on the ground and he should check it out. He crouched down to see...

Alex tossed a handful of pennies under the car.

Yeah... we were a wild and crazy back in the day. Almost as good as "pull my finger®"

® AndyTV

built a nice golf course out by Devens too.

On CBS this morning there was a segment on autonomous airplanes being on the way to our skies soon.

And you believe it... 😳

I saw that exact truck 🚛🚛🚛🚛🚛

Annnnddddd

I saw a VERY ASSCARED DENNIS WEAVER HOG TIED ON ITS FRONT BUMPER...
Then suddenly I was transported back to 1971....

What a great movie.. =d>

I'm not a pilot but don't most planes fly autonomously for most of their time in flight?

Take off, landing, and flight adjustments along the way (weather, traffic) are handled by the flight crew but don't they mostly run autopilot once they achieve altitude and a clear path to the destination?

Quick check with the Google machine turned up this:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/cox/2014/08/11/autopilot-control-takeoff-cruising-landing/13921511/

Tirty NINE!

[LOL] Excellent, that movie was scary as F.

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