Part 36 - State of Play

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.

Stay tuned.