Beijing, China (CNN) -- A driverless van has completed the longest-ever trip by an unmanned vehicle, beginning in Italy and arriving in China, covering 13,000 kilometers (8,077 miles), researchers said.
The van arrived at the Shanghai World Expo on Thursday, after leaving Italy on July 20. The three-month trip took the van through Eastern Europe, Russia and Kazakhstan; across China through the Gobi Desert; and finally along the Great Wall, before arriving for a celebration at the expo. The driverless van relied solely on electricity.
The motorhead in me is appalled - cars were meant to be driven. The tech geek in me thinks this is one of the coolest stories yet - we're approaching, yet again, the realm of science fiction where we have cars that will drive themselves. Obviously, this test is flawed - three months to travel 8,000 miles isn't exactly record-shattering, and won't extrapolate to real-world conditions; however it's a neat first step towards autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles of the future. The article mentions other groups working on automated cars and the successes they have had; this appears to be a real line of research for groups interested in robotics as it relates to transport.
The implications are staggering, from the changes in long-haul trucking to family vacations and everything in between. Imagine the cost savings in goods if trucks can run 24/7 either without human intervention at all or with greatly reduced input. Long distance car trips (near and dear to me, as I've logged close to 10,000 miles this year traveling for various vacations and sundry) may become more appealing if mom & dad can set the trip computer to "Disney" and then kick back and relax. Car manufacturers may start designing cars around a more limited driver role - and, oddly enough, more than likely start offering cars more responsive to driver input as the pendulum swings back. Time will tell if this is the next "big thing" in automobiles or just a fad, but it's interesting to see this technology in action.
I, for one, welcome our new Autobot overlords, and can be useful in rounding up humans to toil in their underground coal mines*.
That is all.
*sorry, had to take the gratuitous "coal-powered" swipe at the electric cars lest I lose my right-wing whacko cred... :)
6 comments:
I'm curious what happened at the border crossings.
Can you imagine I-95 when the control system goes 'blue screen?'
I'm with Jeff... And Stretch, we don't EVEN wanna go there...
I hope this takes a while to implement--I'm too damn old to stop driving truck and take up a new career!
The Greens will demand all other vehicles be instantly scrapped, the Teamsters will demand their Union guys get paid $100 an hour to sit in the cab "just in case", the Homeland Security types will demand GPS tracking on every vehicle so they can monitor it for "Suspicious activities" as it makes its way to a BlogShoot, and your kids will climb in it and say "Take me to Grandma's" and cause you to have a heart attack. This is Progress How?
Good grief, what a crew of pessimists you have reading you, Jay!
Think about this, folks - automated vehicles are only at the very beginning. These are our first steps towards creating this sort of thing. Think back to the very early 1900's - road net pretty well non-existent, every type of vehicle being tried, from gasoline to electric to steam. Tillers, steering wheels, drivers in the middle and on the sides. They just didn't know what would be the best way to implement a roadworthy car or motorcycle yet! Read "Tom Swift and His Motorcycle" or "Tom Swift And His Electric Runabout" if you want the flavor of the times.
Of COURSE there'll be mis-steps. Of course there'll be spectacular flops - they wouldn't call it RESEARCH if they knew what they were doing!! But making mistakes is how you make progress. Yes, you have to find out that, gee, no, this thing took three months to drive across Asia; we should tweak it. And just HOW do you think they got the data to figure out what to tweak?? You've got to find out how NOT to build an automated vehicle before you can find out how TO build an automated vehicle.
Exciting times indeed. I'd rather hop into my Subaru and tell it "Home, Canth" and sit back and read a book than have to drive it.
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