❝ In an abandoned lot on the outskirts of Sacramento, R1, a domed gray vehicle half the size of a Toyota Corolla, is practicing driving itself…as other self-driving vehicles do on test courses in Silicon Valley, Detroit, and China. But R1, made by a startup called Nuro, doesn’t need to be as good. It can make a jolting brake if it sees something on the road or cruise untroubled over a small bump — wrinkles that companies building autonomous taxis work tirelessly to remove. Nuro spent less time on this, because its robots aren’t designed to ferry people. “A lot of those problems can be solved when you remove the passenger,” says co-founder Dave Ferguson. “The pizza doesn’t care if you’re going a little slower.”
❝ Almost every company making self-driving cars, including Alphabet’s Waymo, General Motors, and Ford Motor, says the second move will be delivery vehicles. Nuro, whose co-founders spent years on Waymo LLC’s car project when it was still part of Google, is focused on delivery first…
❝ Without human labor costs, Nuro’s robot has a better chance to make on-demand delivery profitable than the string of failed startups that have littered Silicon Valley in recent years…but it will take a little getting used to…for consumers.
RTFA. Poisonally, I can hardly wait for my favorite pizza delivery spot to send one of these to our driveway.
Say mister, that’s sure a nice little robot. I bet the batteries and stuff must be worth a lot of money – enough for someone to kidnap it maybe …ha, ha, just kidding. So where’s the GPS tracker at?
Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars (New York Times) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/us/waymo-self-driving-cars-arizona-attacks.html
“People are lashing out justifiably,” said Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist at City University of New York and author of the book “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus.” He likened driverless cars to robotic incarnations of scabs — workers who refuse to join strikes or who take the place of those on strike. “There’s a growing sense that the giant corporations honing driverless technologies do not have our best interests at heart,” Mr. Rushkoff said. “Just think about the humans inside these vehicles, who are essentially training the artificial intelligence that will replace them.” See https://rushkoff.com/books/throwing-rocks-at-the-google-bus/
Tempers have flared since a self-driving Über killed a careless human in Arizona last year.
Nothing new from ignorant anarchistic Luddites…
Work, for the night is coming,
When man’s work is done.
“On the future of transportation in an era of automated and autonomous vehicles” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. January 14, 2019 https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/01/11/1805770115
“Autonomous Vehicle Federal Regulation” The National Law Review 1/15/19 https://www.natlawreview.com/article/autonomous-vehicle-federal-regulation
“What the Luddites Really Fought Against” Smithsonian (2011) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/
“Bracing for a Hazy Robo-Future, Ford and VW Join Forces” (Wired 1/15/19) https://www.wired.com/story/ford-vw-alliance-self-driving-cars/ “The alliance we are now building, starting from first formal agreement, will boost both partners’ competitiveness in an era of rapid change,” Herbert Diess, the CEO of Volkswagen, said on a call with reporters. He and Ford CEO Jim Hackett said the partnership—which is not a merger—will begin with the companies jointly developing and building medium-sized pickups and commercial vans, to debut as early as 2022. The automakers said the arrangement should “yield improved annual pre-tax operating results” by 2023. So hopefully, this makes everyone richer.
…the companies have signed a “memorandum of understanding” to collaborate on electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and mobility services. The shape and details of those partnerships are yet to be determined.