@davidc4430wrote:Russian postal drone program crashes into wall and crumbles in debut flight
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-04/russian-postal-drone-hits-wall-crashes-in-debut/9619100
we have driverless cars, IMO a stupid idea
we have drones delivering mail, IMO a stupid idea
can we think of any more?
I think the future is going to be drones & driverless cars, but I don't think we're anywhere close to there yet.
The way i imagine driverless cars is more along the lines of them travelling a road grid, responding to computer controls, on a road where all other traffic is doing the same.
Maybe in such a world we would not even need to own our 'own' car but pay a rental amount.
I sometimes wonder why we're aiming for solar power & cars, why not solar powered roads?
But all that is in the future. It's very early days yet. Everything has to start somewhere & what we're seeing now isn't how driverless cars will end up, I'm sure.
I wish i had a link to it now but years ago, I saw a video of traffic in the city of Melbourne. Forget what year but early 20th century.
I have never seen anything so chaotic in my life. There were trams & pedestrians just crossing willy nilly in front of anything or just wandering along the road. There were a few cars, not many, and a few horses and carts. But they didn't seem to have any particular side they had to keep to.
There wasn't actually much traffic but it was stressful to watch.
Fast forward a few years from that, and although traffic is about 300 times heavier, it moves along much more smoothly. The difference is road rules changed. Suddenly vehicles had a side & had to keep to it, pedestrians have specific spots to cross & keep to footpaths otherwise.
Postal drones will take a bit more effort, we're going to need much stricter air traffic control. Think of present day drones as like the early days of air flight, where flying was a highly risky business.
Think of how much of the world has fallen into computer use. You're now using an ebay message board. Ebay just wasn't around in Australia in the 1990s or if it was, almost no one had the internet till the mid 1990s anyway.
Children in primary schools are now working on constructing & using robots. Think of how much difference 20 or 30 years can make! Even 10 years sometimes.
We may think driverless cars right now are dangerous & I certainly wouldn't want to be the pioneer at the moment either-but a lot of people in the early 1900s thought exactly the same of cars & planes.
Changes are coming, they are going to be great, people will wonder how we ever managed with unsafe drivers and individuals making decisions without computer help.
They'll look at our present accident stats and sigh and say-glad I didn't have to get around in those days. So unsafe.
I'm not a fan of the idea of driverless cars mixing it with human drivers, I think we're going to have to move to a different model, with car or carrying pods moving along some sort of electronic tracks.
They won't have to go slowly. We won't need a person walking in front waving a red flag.
I don't think I'll live long enough to see it all which is a pity, I don't love driving.
on the one hand: driverless cars
on the other: drivers on Ice/alcohol/name your substance
who knows where we're going to end up
jetpacks are looking good
@springyzonewrote:I'm not a fan of the idea of driverless cars mixing it with human drivers, I think we're going to have to move to a different model, with car or carrying pods moving along some sort of electronic tracks.
They won't have to go slowly.
I don't think I'll live long enough to see it all which is a pity, I don't love driving.
dont we have those allready, we call them trams and trains. and they are resonably safe, the odd bad train derailments and tram accidents.
@davidc4430wrote:
@springyzonewrote:I'm not a fan of the idea of driverless cars mixing it with human drivers, I think we're going to have to move to a different model, with car or carrying pods moving along some sort of electronic tracks.
They won't have to go slowly.
I don't think I'll live long enough to see it all which is a pity, I don't love driving.
dont we have those allready, we call them trams and trains. and they are resonably safe, the odd bad train derailments and tram accidents.
No, we absolutely don't have them at the moment. Trams & trains are hampered by the fact they can't go an individualised route. Imagine if you like, a small 'car' for want of a better word, that seats about 4. imagine it can be programmed with a destination & travel along the road tracks, all controlled by computers, & where everyone else is in a similar 'car'.
That once you get to wherever you are going, the car might move off to someone else in the area.
Of course, there will be inconveniences & if the computer network dropped out or was damaged, it would be chaotic. But then again, we're already in that scenario with banks etc. In the event of an electro magnetic pulse, if bank computer records were wiped out, we would have no records of ownership, no record of loans or accounts. I know they are deep underground for that reason. yet we haven't let that risk stop us from changing to electronic banking. But I can't see our reliance on computers & electronics fading out anytime soon.
The fact there has been a death in a driverless car......there are deaths every day from cars with human drivers. Do we demand that they be banned?
Nothing stays the same forever. The days of petrol etc are running out & the world will move on. There will probably be a lot more deaths along the way, same as there were in the early days of flying.
