Update : US Military are looking at the cybertruck as a roadbot platform. No surprise.
Autonomous vehicles are introducing themselves to everyday lives. Uber, Google, Tesla all work on fully autonomous driving. Some already claim having driven a car coast to coast without human intervention. Salons are showing cars without steering wheels, and the advantages of handing over control of your vehicle to automated systems is becoming more obvious. Below a compilation of moments where Tesla Autopilot intervened to prevent harm to its drivers. It beeps as soon as it detects a dangerous development, even if it is traffic entering a crossing up ahead. It also seemed to avoid a rolling car.
All this is just the beginning of a revolution, and its not the revolution of human mobility, but of that of robots. Once autonomous driving is a fact people will realize that this means you can have an electrically powered platform delivered almost everywhere. We wrote about this on another site calling these new vehicles Roadbots. The applicaitions of roadbots are as endless as are jobs. Especially with the help of AI. We are a few steps away from bibedal mobility for robotic platforms as well so soon a bot can drive up to (for instance) a broken powerline, climb the thing and do repairs, even if it involves requiring a hoist or some other heavy equipment. Potholes in the roads can be repaired by autonomous roadbots that just drive over with hot asphalt and poor and flatten the holes after having positioned a roadblock. No humans needed.
Just put a bot on it!
When Tesla produces its autonomous electric pickup truck, which will be huge, it will become clear to anyone that those things delivering products, maybe fridges which they place on a robotic skateboard to get it into the home, is just a thought away. We are very interested in the use of these devices to revive the ecology as part of the roboeconomic system. Roadbots shuttling water, seeds, planting saplings etc. Even though there appear to be more effective ways to plant massive amounts of forrest (like airdropping carbon protected seed pellets).
It is weird how people think about new technology, like we see these delivery bots to be driving in the streets of cities now. They annoy people, they catch fire. But we are a few months away from delivery trucks just making stops where packages should be delivered, calling the recipient and handing over the packets. Stores, shops, individuals can all just deal with a virtual assistant on the truck, even negotiating a new delivery time.
We think roadbots will change life enormously, especially electrically powered ones, because they can do many things with little overhead. EVs are low mainenance and high power. What about ambulances where the medics come over on motor bikes but the patient is strapped on a roadbot that weaves its way through traffic faster than any human can? For us another important question is : When we are done taking care of ourselves, what about nature? Maybe green the deserts using waterdonkeys?