Driverless cars: Can you trust a robot to drive you home?
Uber and Ola are huge taxi companies but they own very few cars. However, their highly sophisticated systems of fleet management and GPS based navigation through city traffic make them so easily available and inexpensive. They have revolutionized personal transportation in nearly a thousand major towns worldwide with the result that many people don’t need to keep a car any longer. A small car with a driver can however only carry 3 passengers and if the driver can be eliminated it will increase its passenger capacity by 25%. Enough to greatly improve a taxi’s earning power or profitability. The idea of a driverless car is, however, rather scary. It might be terrifying to see one speeding toward you but the ongoing revolution in electronics has achieved and is achieving many amazing things. A robot on an automotive manufacturing line is, for example, many times faster and more efficient than a hundred workers and they do not make mistakes. They don’t also need medicare, welfare be...