I thought it might be time to see where we actually are at this point in time as there have been many announcements in the past year talking up what will be done but we actually need a reality check.
In previous blogs I have discussed factory automation, shipping automation and computers in the home as well as robotics in general.
In transport the focus has been on automated cars and trucks but that's only the most visible part.
Dubai is well on the way to introducing a personal quad copter taxi service by July this year using the Chinese Ehang184.
Automated trains have actually been around for some time with more coming on.
Fully automated services passenger services with no staff on board already exist in:
Spain
Denmark
UK
France
US
Canada
Germany
Switzerland
Automated long distance ore trains are in use here in Australia as well as trucks and other processes in mining. Australia leads the world in mining automation.
Industrial automation is definitely here to stay, even in the most unlikely areas.
Now for something completely different!
Now that it's 2017, many new cars are appearing with low level autonomous features as standard.
Adaptive cruise control, collision avoidance braking and lane holding are rapidly becoming standard features on even cheaper cars.
2018 will see the more autonomous functions appearing in earnest.
Google's Waymo, self driving car project, has announced public testing for hundreds of families in Arizona USA. It's also extending its fleet of automated minivans from 100 to 600 which will make it the largest fleet of robotic cars in the world.
Meanwhile, Roborace is the world's first robotic racing car.
However the first race between two of them actually didn't go as well as expected with one crashing into the barrier.
After all, that's what testing is about, rather on a track than a city street.
Due to family issues and a general malaise on my part I haven't done a blog for some time so I will now make the effort.
Firstly I finally got to take a ride on the only automated bus being legally operated on public roads in the world.
Of course this is in my home city of Perth Western Australia, often said to be the remotest city in the world as it's on the west coast of Australia (With a name like that where else would it be?)
The next nearest major city would be Adelaide which is 2,700 kilometres by road (1300 plus miles) so that is a lot of empty space but more on that later in this entry.
Perth is a modern city with nearly 2 million people and lots and lots of white beaches and a climate that California only thinks it has and without the pollution.
So for us to be the first in the world with an automated bus is pretty cool.
It is attracting interest from around the world with many visitors suprised that it's happening here.
Even Kryten from Red Dwarf fame (otherwise known as Robert Lewelyn) has been on the Intellibus.
His video is far better than mine so I will point to that to save me the embarrassment.
While the Intellibus is on the road it is not running (yet) in full autonomous mode as there are staff on board armed with an Xbox controller that gives them control if needed.
The bus takes off, trundles along, turns corners and gives way to traffic before proceeding.
However it detects obstacles and stops if impeded as the object avoidance is not yet turned on and the Xbox controller comes into its own and allows them to navigate around the obstruction.
This was particularly obvious when a woman opened her car door directly in front of the bus and it braked hard to avoid removing her from the shallow end of the gene pool.
The bin men had been recently as well and the bins on the road also made us stop and take remedial action.
The first thing I noticed when we took off was that I had absolutely no fear of not having a human in total control.
The second thing I noticed was the push bikes overtaking us but after all, it is early days in the testing and you can't really expect the authorities to sign off on full road speeds straight out of the gate.
All in all I found it to be a great experience and very much look forward to this becoming the norm.
All Kudos to the RAC and the government for putting Perth in the forefront, albeit in a limited way, of this amazing new technology.
A couple of weeks ago I had to opportunity to visit a number of remote communities in the far east of Western Australia (WA), close to the Northern Territory (NT) and South Australian (SA) borders.
To give you some context, WA covers a million square miles. There are sheep stations in the far north bigger than many European countries (and US states).
You could plonk Texas in the far north and never miss the space WA would lose, it's that big.
Considering a single state that is 1/3 the size of the whole continental US and has less that 3 million people with 2 million living in Perth, then you can appreciate that there is an awful lot of empty.
The remote communities I visited, in the course of my work, are really remote, as can be seen from the above photo. The white dots is the community.
The local people here are nomadic tribes that wander through the three states, sometimes spending six months at one site before moving on. These are the Ngaanyatjarra people and one of only two tribes, I believe, who still have their native tongue as a first language.
These communities have local schools with a transitory population and very dedicated staff that do their absolute best for the kids and the community. As with most schools in Western Australia, I.T. is widely used for education and these remote communities are no exception. They have broadband of varying speeds and computers and tablets at the schools.
One of the principals related a story where all the kids disappeared one morning and the whole community went bush for a few hours.
When the boys returned they were in full body paint (ochre).
They all filed back into class like that and it was a testimony to the meeting of cultures when they were sitting there in full paint and googling through Ipads.
The point I am trying to make is that technology is now everywhere and there is no getting away from it.
Even in the middle of nowhere technology still exists and is widely accepted and used, so when people talk about bring back jobs by stopping automation, stopping globalisation and generally acting like a Luddite, think of a kid, sitting in the middle of nowhere looking at a whole shiny new world through a device held in his painted hand.
