This will be a very serious question one day. Robots might be numerous and annoying. Their owners might steer them into places where they aren’t welcome. Or they might just go adventuring on their own. Criminals might hijack them.
Robots will need clear, official, enforced guidelines for where they can and cannot go.
I propose a continuous zone (they need to be able to get from A to B) which is a public access area for all robots. Beyond that, anywhere outside of the zone will require permission for entry.
The best way of running this is a universal, wirelessly-connected mapping system with focus on permission-based access.
Nine hours of what the train driver sees. Not only does it make great background video, but for anyone wanting to visit the area or even take the same journey – it’s a lot better than Google Street View.
It’s not for everyone, but some people will watch it for hours:
The next step is obvious – live streaming video from a camera on a moving vehicle. There are plenty of webcams websites at present, suggesting that some people like looking at static, real-time video. With improvements in technology, especially 5G mobile data, live video from public transport will be possible, and relatively cheap and easy to implement.
As public transport passengers demand fast and continual internet access, getting the feed out there won’t be a problem.
Trains tend to go on journeys that only trains take. But buses (and trams) use public roads, which means that watching a live feed of the driver’s view of a bus will be analogous to driving the route yourself.
And for armchair travellers, the live aspect will bring an extra dimension to the experience.
Ask any video photographer about the importance of movement to maintain interest. In my own experience, when I am being interviewed about a concept or idea, they always want to film me walking into a room, sitting down, and typing on the PC or opening a book and leafing through it. It’s more interesting than a talking head. Taken to an extreme, film director Michael Bay (see above) loves three levels of movement in one shot – movement of the background, movement of the camera, and movement of the actor. While Bay’s movies aren’t popular with film critics, they do make a lot of money, and ultimately it is because movement is better than static.
Such live feeds from public transport are most probably inevitable – who will be the first to make it happen?
Here’s some more train journey videos from Canada and Japan:
If you love animals, roadkill is a sad consequence of humans building roads through wild habitats.
If you love people, then be concerned that many die from colliding (or swerving to avoid) with animals on the road.
Roadkill can be avoided using technology. Using the type of sensors predicted by the Internet of Things, and combined with high-powered computing, it should be possible to keep track of wild animals without physically tagging them. All you need is enough HD cameras in the right locations to film wildlife, and combine that with a mapping system. From the imagery alone computers will (in the future) be able to identify individual animals. The mapping system will be able to track them.
Scenario: driving along an Australian road where kangaroos are known to cross.
The system, with all of its low cost, strategically-placed cameras can tell that a group of 10 kangaroos are lingering within 200m of a road. People driving by are informed of the risk and they slow down (or their self-driving cars do so automatically). If/when the kangaroos bound across the road, the potential for collision is substantially reduced – a better result for all involved.
The technology exists, it just needs to become cheap enough to easily deploy. The algorithms required are achievable, but will take time to refine.
