Thursday, December 01, 2016

Driverless Bizmos


What's a "bizmo" again?  Business Mobile, like an RV ("recreational vehicle") but for business -- you're not just goofing off.

A driverless bizmo would be the autonomous version. We already know about downloading the operating system when you get to the garage.  Or the rental agency might have that step taken care of. You might not think of it as a rental agency, either.

Because humans have avoided discussing the Old Man River City project, even in science fiction, we don't have much fluency around "cities from scratch".  Even though we could use them.  A city with "people movers" as they used to be called, i.e. "driverless cars", would likely need the whole grid to be controlled in that way, more like Wall-e, except we'd also allow pedestrians.

Doing a whole city for driverless would seem pretty EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), what Americans used to be famous for, before the Fourth Reich period we've been enjoying.  If we dial back to Disney, his original vision, we might actually get somewhere with these memes.  Or just keep doing Dubai.

You know, of course, that once cars are driverless, humans will want to kick back and send them on errands.  "Go get me those groceries" (a robot picks them in the warehouse, fills the basket).  A goodly portion of cars on the road will contain no humans at all.

We've already planned that for trucks (the "zombie truck system" I called it on the physics listserv), but people tend to forget about "no people" movers in the general case.  We've taken to calling those "drones".  But what if on wheels?

Like luggage systems at airports -- you're not supposed to ride in your suitcase.