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Autonomous Transportation Trends and Motivations | |
Autonomous Transportation
Two articles about automatic locomotion have caught my attention recently. The first is over on Beyond 2000: Corporate Drones. It discusses how Unmanned Systems have been a great success in the Afghan campaign, especially the planes working for the US Air Force. This has impressed the Pentagon, and pushed them to expand the technology to space travel, intensive pilot training or even suicide missions. The second feature is over on MSNBC, entitled Levitating Cars Above Freeways. This article looks into autonomous vehicles for daily traffic, based on an electromagnetic levitation system. This approach is feasible since it satisfies most of the requirements of next generation transport: personalised (door to door, commute free), fast (mass transit based), and simple (partly automated). However, it fails in that you need to have specialised magnetic tracks, as well as pay toll: this will doom this particular approach. Using existing roads with automated control seems possible, and should be attempted at least as a short/medium term solution. Let's see how this one unfolds! |
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