The day of automated delivery to consumers may not be here yet, but automated intra-system transport is already here.<\/p>\n
\nSelf-driving delivery is coming to Walmart \u2014 but not directly to customers<\/a><\/p>\n
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As the buzz about human-carting robo-taxis starts to short-circuit, an unheralded segment of the driverless future is taking shape and showing promise: goods-moving robo-vans. Rather than serving up hot pizza pies or deploying headless robots to carry groceries to the doorstep, robo-vans travel on fixed routes from warehouse to warehouse or to a smaller pickup point, transporting packages to get them closer, but not all the way, to consumers.<\/p>\n
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Ford Motor Co., testing many forms of driverless delivery, calls these repeatable routes \u201cmilk runs,\u201d a throwback term to the days of household dairy delivery.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything on driverless delivery that is a milk run is a good application for autonomy,\u201d said Sherif Marakby, chief executive officer of Ford\u2019s autonomous vehicles unit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Some things will probably not ever be susceptible of automation; crawling under my house and repairing a plumbing leak, for instance. But a lot of routine manual labor is going to go the way of the Dodo within a generation. And thanks to advances in AI, a lot of engineering work is going to disappear, too.<\/p>\n
We need to be thinking about those things, and their social implications, right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The day of automated delivery to consumers may not be here yet, but automated intra-system transport is already here. Self-driving delivery is coming to Walmart \u2014 but not directly to customers [ … ] As the buzz about human-carting robo-taxis … Continue reading