Most of us have heard about the robotic vehicles racing through the desert without any people in them. Let me refresh your memory; there were several events sponsored by DARPA where the smartest geeks in research university level robotics, and the automotive industry got together to see which team is the greatest innovator in creating robotic cars that drive themselves.
Now, one robotics research group is designing a robotic racing truck, which will compete in the upcoming Pikes Peak Race to the top of the mountain in Colorado Springs. In other words, it will be competing against time with other vehicles that are being raced by humans. Now racing up to the top of the mountain will not be easy for a robot and one mistake - it goes off the cliff.
Of course, whether it succeeds or fails it will definitely bring a good amount of public relations to the annual Pikes Peaks Race in Colorado Springs. Indeed, this brings up another interesting question, what if it wins? What if we have finally developed a robotic vehicle that is better than a human? In the future, there will be robotic unmanned aerial vehicles like those over Iraq and Afghanistan, which will engage enemy fighter pilots and shoot them down.
So, it stands to reason that eventually, as the technology advances and the processing speeds increase, there will be vehicles that can compete with the top NASCAR drivers, and the top Formula One drivers. They will carefully pick when the pass, based on percentages of potential success, know when to take risks, and when to back off.
Best of all or worst of all if you happen to be a driver making a good living off of racing vehicles, each one of these artificially intelligent robotic race cars will be learning as they go. And they won't be learning individually, each racecar in each race will learn something and download what they've learned to the other cars, of similar types, where ever they are and whatever races they are in.
Which means someone who has the racecar experience of 20 years, and thousands of races, will be competing with artificially intelligent racecar machines, which have accumulated, that much knowledge about racing and experience in only a six months to one year. Now that's scary stuff. Some people cringe at this future, others are accepting it as a challenge, and whether you like it or not that is the direction this technology is moving.
In the future, we all might be participating with and competing against machines and that will determine the best of breed. Please think on this, and e-mail me if you think you can handle it?
Ref. http://www.physorg.com/news189106253.html
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