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This technology is coming for sure, it won’t stop at just avoiding car crashes, and it is going to be great.

I say it is coming for sure, because it has already been demonstrated - it just needs to get better and cheaper.

This is just one instance of a technological tidal wave which will start hitting this decade - robots unbolting from the factory floor and moving freely.

Driving cars, trucks, ships and aircraft (e.g. drones) is something they will be able to do untiringly, with the reaction speed of computer-controlled ABS brakes, and with as much built-in redundancy for safety as you would care to buy. The little Roomba robot vacuum cleaner is being joined by robots safe enough to swing blades cutting the grass and operate booms picking fruit, gentle enough to lift a 95 year old out of bed and sturdy enough to enter burning buildings to rescue those inside. Household robots will be able to be let off the leash to do the shopping and run errands on their own, like hitting that damn squirrel with a shot of bear spray the next time he goes for the bird feeder (another robot could videotape this, while a third goes to fetch another beer).

No fundamental technological obstacle or physics problem needs to be solved - just continued engineering refinement and coding, supported by the ongoing improvements in the size, cost and capability of computing power. We will continue to build intelligence into more and more things, which will be able to communicate wirelessly.

Some have said that the field of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, might be better thought of as IA, meaning Intelligence Augmentation, where our capabilities will be expanded with more powerful tools, like a pack of robot assistants, sensors and software applications doing our bidding. The bulk of humanity will be freed up to pursue new lines of work, and the cost of many goods and services will plummet.

This is where we are going as these basic mobility technologies continue to develop - some have already been adopted, but the pace of development is picking up. It is going to be great!