The robotic revolution is continuing right before our eyes.
A team at Carnegie Mellon University was awarded $2 million on Sunday for winning a race of driverless cars on urban streets in Southern California.
The results of this year’s event, organized by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the organization most famous for launching the Internet, puts fully robotic cars at the same developmental stage as airplanes were when the Wright brothers first took to the sky, DARPA director Tony Tether told News.com.
The Wrights performed what is generally considered the first controlled, powered heavier-than-air flight in 1903.
Just twenty years later, there were aircraft carriers, airlines, air races, basically all the elements of what we consider modern air travel. And that was before the era of computers and satellite navigation.
I bet that we see the first fully automated, self-driving car on the road available for purchase within 10 years. There may be some limits — you’ll probably only be able to drive it on roads, no off-roading — but I have no doubt that’s the future of the auto industry.
Heck, cars can already parallel park on their own without any driver oversight, they can warn you when you’re drifting out of your lane while driving, and they can tighten your seat belt and warm up your brakes when it looks like you’re about to get into an accident.
The robotic future is coming quickly.
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