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 benefits and they never go on strike. Modern robots can even do highly sensitive things like playing music or intelligent things like playing a game of chess. Virtual reality is becoming very real. It was recently reported that some Japanese men even prefer a soft and pliable silicone sex doll to a real life wife or girlfriend who can often be critical or uncooperative.

Human error is also by far the largest cause of accidents so a tiny robot hidden somewhere in a car may actually be a lot safer than a mortal human driver who can get tired, drunk or distracted by his mobile or by a pretty girl on the road ahead. There are already a few driverless trains but the idea of a driverless car or a pilotless plane makes people feel very uncomfortable. People, however, get used to innovation quite quickly.

Over the past decade, most of the automotive engineering has been driven by electronics that not only make engine management much more efficient but they also make the suspensions and brakes much safer. They play a huge role in climate control, lighting, and security to make a car easier to drive, more reliable and efficient. A modern car, therefore, has more chips in them than there are in a packet of wafers.