From the Department of, "About F%$#ing Time"

The California DMV has issued new regulations allowing police to ticket robotaxies.

Hopefully cops will take this responsibility seriously.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles announced new autonomous vehicle regulations on Tuesday that will, among other things, allow police officers to issue moving violations to AV companies like Waymo and Tesla when their robotaxis break the law.

The new regulations, which will be enforced starting July 1, also require AV companies to respond to first responder calls within 30 seconds. Emergency officials will be allowed to issue geofencing instructions that force robotaxis to be cleared from areas where an active emergency is taking place.

………

Back in 2023, NBC Bay Area was the first to report that robotaxis were immune from traffic tickets since humans needed to be present to accept the ticket. It took almost three years, but that problem has now been fixed.

………

Wired published a new piece on Thursday about complaints from emergency responders, including firefighters, police officers, EMTs, and paramedics, who have warned that some robotaxis seem to be performing worse than when they were initially introduced. Wired cites a private meeting between emergency responders and federal officials in March, where robotaxis were described as blocking fire stations and “freezing up” in dangerous ways.

One question though, how do you handcuff a Waymo?

Elon Lie? Say it Ain't So!

Elon said that it had removed safety monitors from its, "Robotaxis."

What he did not say was that these monitors were simply moved to a chase car that closely followed the "autonomous" taxis.

Earlier today, [ed: 2 days ago] Elon Musk announced on X that Tesla had “just started Tesla Robotaxi drives in Austin with no safety monitor in the car.” Tesla’s stock immediately jumped over 4% on the news. Headlines across the financial press celebrated the milestone.

There’s just one problem: it appears to be another game of smoke and mirrors. The Robotaxi cars spotted without “safety monitor” were all being followed by a trailing black Tesla supervising the “driverless” Robotaxi.

It means Tesla didn’t “remove the safety monitor”, it just moved them to a vehicle behind them.

………

When Musk says there’s “no safety monitor in the car,” he’s technically telling the truth, the monitor is in a different car, following right behind. But the implication that Tesla has achieved true unsupervised autonomy is misleading at best.

True unsupervised autonomy means the vehicle can operate safely without any human backup ready to intervene. That’s what Waymo does, their vehicles operate genuinely alone, without chase cars, across multiple cities. They’ve accumulated over 100 million fully driverless miles.

Now, there’s still some remote teleoperation when the vehicle gets into trouble, but it’s clear that Tesla is not even there yet.

This is fraud, period, full stop.

Reminds Me of the Movie Over the Hedge

Every so often, you see a headline, and you think, "Way to reinforce stereotypes."

The headline, "Japanese Farmers Send Out Automated Laser Drones to Defend Chickens," is one of these heds.

It has a seriously dystopian robot anime vibe: 

Chicken farming is a fowl business. To make it, you’ll need extensive knowledge in animal husbandry, business finance, biosecurity, and mechanical repair. If one company in Japan has its way, that list could soon include “drone skills” as well.

A Japanese firm called NTT e-Drone Technology Company Ltd has developed a drone-laser system designed to scare wild birds and other unwanted visitors away from chicken coops, as reported by tech blog Tom’s Hardware.

The quadcopter system sports a payload consisting of a laser-grid projector not unlike those chintzy Christmas light shows from 2019. When deployed, the drone automatically navigates toward unwanted nuisance animals before blasting them with a dazzling array of red and green lasers.

Also, it reminds me of a movie I saw a while back:

Finally

After stonewalling, buying off plaintiffs, and silencing them with non-disclosure agreements, and engaging in character assassination against whistle-blowers, Tesla has finally been taken to court and a jury verdict has been delivered over the claims and the capabilities of its autonomous driving features.

Tesla was found ⅓ at fault, which the jury determined was worth  $329 million dollars.

I am certain that this amount will be reduced on appeal, but much like asbestos litigation, this is a first, and will lead to more. 

Robotaxi Fail

Some Texas politicians have asked Tesla delay its Robotaxi rollout.

If I were to guess the source of this request, my guess would be Musk, because the program isn't working, which is par for the course for Teslas's self driving technology: 

Texas lawmakers have officially requested that Tesla delay its planned Robotaxi launch in Austin by a few months due to a new law being implemented.

It’s a Godsend for Elon Musk.

As we previously reported, Tesla’s planned Robotaxi launch in Austin, Texas, now “tentatively” scheduled for June 22, is a moving of the goal post for Tesla.

CEO Elon Musk himself has previously described what Tesla plans to launch as “not really self-driving”, but the CEO is using the new strategy as a way to claim a win in autonomous driving after years of missed deadlines and failed promises.

Why this charlatan has been humored for so long is beyond me.

Corruption Much?

The Trump administration has removed reporting requirements for self-driving cars, because ……… Elon has been lying about Tesla self-driving capabilities for years?

Hoocoodanode?

Automakers and tech developers testing and deploying self-driving and advanced driver-assistance features will no longer have to report as much detailed, public crash information to the federal government, according to a new framework released today by the US Department of Transportation.

The moves are a boon for makers of self-driving cars and the wider vehicle technology industry, which has complained that federal crash-reporting requirements are overly burdensome and redundant. But the new rules will limit the information available to those who watchdog and study autonomous vehicles and driver-assistance features—tech developments that are deeply entwined with public safety but which companies often shield from public view because they involve proprietary systems that companies spend billions to develop.

………

The new rules allow companies to shield from public view some crash details, including the automation version involved in incidents and the “narratives” around the crashes, on the grounds that such information contains “confidential business information.” Self-driving-vehicle developers, such as Waymo and Zoox, will no longer need to report crashes that include property damage less than $1,000, if the incident doesn’t involve the self-driving car crashing on its own or striking another vehicle or object. (This may nix, for example, federal public reporting on some minor fender-benders in which a Waymo is struck by another car. But companies will still have to report incidents in California, which has more stringent regulations around self-driving.)

And in a change, the makers of advanced driver-assistance features, such as Full Self-Driving, must report crashes only if they result in fatalities, hospitalizations, air bag deployments, or a strike on a "vulnerable road user,” like a pedestrian or cyclist—but no longer have to report the crash if the vehicle involved just needs to be towed.

Cui Bono?  Why the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™, of course!

………

One company in particular emerges as a winner: Elon Musk’s Tesla, which now will be able to curtail public reporting on its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) features, and may enjoy an easier road to federal safety approval for its upcoming Cybercab, a two-seat, purpose-built robotaxi that does not have a steering wheel or brakes.

“The company that probably benefits the most from that is Tesla,” [Telemetry Marketing VP Sam] Abuelsamid says. Though the Transportation Department cited safety as the number one motivator behind the new rules, “there’s nothing in these changes that actually prioritizes safety,” he says.

Of course it does nothing for safety.

The goal here is to make it easier for people to make money killing their customers, and other drivers, and pedestrians  ………

Speaking of Snollygosters

When Elon Musk showed off his "autonomous" humanoid robots, they were not autonomous, they were operated by remote control by humans:

After Elon Musk provided his "long-term" vision for autonomous, humanoid robots at last week's "We, Robot" event, we expressed some skepticism about the autonomy of the Optimus prototypes sent out for a post-event mingle with the assembled, partying humans. Now, there's been a raft of confirmation that human teleoperators were indeed puppeting the robot prototypes for much of the night.

Bloomberg cites unnamed "people familiar with the matter" in reporting that Tesla "used humans to remotely control some capabilities" of the prototype robots at the event. The report doesn't specify which demonstrated capabilities needed that human assistance, but it points out that the robots "were able to walk without external control using artificial intelligence" (the lack of a similar AI call-out for any other robot actions that night seems telling).

How is this not securities fraud, and why hasn't he been arrested?

Full Safe Driving, Huh?

It turns out that the Teslas operating in the Boring Company tunnel beneath Las Vegas, a 2 mile circle with no weather, pedestrians, or cross traffic, cannot operate autonomously.

The task is too tough for the Tesla "Full Safe Driving" hardware and software to handle.

Hoocoodanode?

Autonomous driving capabilities are a central component of Tesla's stratospheric share price, with CEO Elon Musk repeatedly telling investors that they're the difference between "being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero." But real-world performance on the road lags far behind Musk's claims, with the latest data point coming from another Musk venture, the Boring Company, and its tunnels under Las Vegas.

………

So far, there's just a 2.2-mile loop with three stations serving the Las Vegas Convention Center, albeit with the potential to expand the subterranean system to 68 miles (110 km) in total.

When the Boring Company tunnels were first proposed, the concepts featured custom-designed autonomous electric people movers, but when Ars got a ride in a test tunnel in 2018, it was in a Tesla Model X SUV with a human behind the wheel. The mode of transport inside the Boring Company's tunnels remains Tesla road cars, but they are resolutely human-driven despite the controlled environment with constant lighting and a lack of weather, other traffic, or pedestrians for the camera-based system to worry about.

In fact, there's no timeline for eliminating the driver in the (Vegas) loop, according to Steve Hill, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Convention Center and Visitors Authority. Speaking with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Hill said, "Hopefully this will get started just lightly, using a driver assistance tool by the end of this year."

Gee, Elon R. Musk, sooper genius sounds a lot like Wile E. Coyote, sooper genius, doesn't it?

Elon Musk has an even more distant relationship with the truth than Donald Trump, and that is not a low bar.

Yeah, “Insufficient,” Is Kind of Their Thing

Consumer Reports has looked at Tesla's massive recall over its dangerous self driving technology, and determined that it is essentially a Potemkin recall which addresses none of the problems noted by the NHTSA.

This is not a surprise.  Tesla has been treating its customers, and its employees as disposable since it started selling cars:

Tesla’s fix for its Autopilot recall of more than 2 million vehicles is being called “insufficient” by Consumer Reports, following preliminary tests.

Kelly Funkhouser, the nonprofit organization’s associate director of vehicle technology, tells TechCrunch she discovered it’s still possible to cover the cabin camera while using Autopilot, meaning drivers can neutralize one of the two main ways the car monitors if they are paying attention to the road.

What’s more, Funkhouser says she did not notice any differences when activating or using Autopilot’s flagship feature, Autosteer, outside of the controlled-access highways where Tesla says the software is designed to be used.

While the testing isn’t comprehensive, it shows questions remain unanswered about Tesla’s approach to driver monitoring — the tech at the heart of the recall.

I expect Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ to hit CU with a SLAPP suit in the next few days, because that's kind of his thing. 

Really though, just stop letting Tesla use the general public as beta testers.

Indian Prop Lands Near Lunar South Pole

India's first moon landing

India's Chandrayaan-3 probe just landed in the Lunar south polar region, the first such landing of a probe in that region, and the first lunar landing for India.

It's also got a small rover, so it there is a pretty good chance that it will find any water that is there to find.

The first images from India's Chandrayaan-3 mission taken after the probe's historic moon touchdown reveal a pockmarked surface near the lunar south pole.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) shared the images on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday (Aug. 23), about four hours after the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft completed its smooth descent.

The first set of four images were taken by the lander's Horizontal Velocity Camera as it was nearing the surface of the moon. An additional image from the Landing Imager Camera, shared a little later, shows a glimpse of the landing site, including a portion of the spacecraft's landing leg and its shadow.

………

The landing made India only the fourth country in history to successfully put a spacecraft on the surface of the moon, after the United States, the former Soviet Union and China. Chandrayaan-3 is also the first spacecraft in history to touch down near the lunar south pole, an area that is currently attracting the attention of scientists and space agencies from all over the world.

Scientists think that the permanently shadowed polar craters contain water ice trapped in the rocks, which could be extracted and used to support a permanent human presence on Earth's natural companion. Moreover, these lunar craters could be used to build next-generation telescopes that would allow astronomers to see farther than they can today.

A small rover called Pragyan arrived on board Chandrayaan-3 and will soon deploy and commence its exploration of the exciting region, so many more fascinating images are likely to come soon. Both the rover and the lander, however, are unlikely to remain operational for more than two weeks, as ISRO doesn't expect the vehicles' batteries to make it through the two-week lunar night.

Still, it should be an exciting 2 weeks.

This Was Foreseeable, but What’s the Money in That?

It turns out that we have found yet another risk arising from the self-driving cars scam, no consideration has been made for dealing with emergency first responders.

This is not a surprise.  The companies unsuccessfully developing this technology can't even handle the most basic of highway interactions, and it literally has cops setting off smoke grenades in San Francisco:

The self-driving future has arrived in San Francisco. And, increasingly and all too often, it looks like a confounded cop, road flare in hand, commanding a wayward autonomous vehicle as if it were a misbehaving, two-ton puppy.

“No!” shouts the cop, as captured in his body-worn camera footage. “You stay!”

The incident occurred on Feb. 9, during one of San Francisco’s more memorable recent emergencies: A dollar-store Walter White apparently lost control of his Sunset District garage dope factory, resulting in a lethal explosion and fire. The normally sedate neighborhood in the vicinity of 21st Avenue and Noriega Street was instantly transformed into both a disaster scene and a crime scene.

And, to make it a truly San Francisco scene, a driverless Waymo vehicle subsequently proceeded to meander into the middle of things, like an autonomous Mr. Magoo.

“It doesn’t know what to do!” shouts an officer caught in the background of the body-worn camera footage. “I’ll pop a flare!” responds the cop wearing the camera. “There’ll be hella smoke in the front.”

He then commands the vehicle to “stay,” and places a flare in front of it. But it does not obey, hella smoke and all (“ah, f%$#!”).

(%$# mine)

………

The “great relationship” part is probably true; fire officials who’ve worked with the autonomous vehicle companies had nice things to say about their representatives. But not about their vehicles.

“They’ve made every effort to work with us in public safety measures and be a good partner,” said one. “But they do not have a good product.”

"They do not have a good product."

There is no possibility of their having a good product in the near (or dsistant) future.

Allowing these folks to do beta alpha testing on the streets of San Francisco is negligent, and they are a public hazard and a public nuisance.

No. Just No.

I do not know what possessed some Japanese scientists to create a robotic finger in human skin, but I do not like it on bit.

I do not like it with a bat,
I do not like it with a cat,

I do no like it here of there,
I do not like it anywhere.

Roboticists from the University of Tokyo have taken a tiny step toward creating the Terminator. They’ve built an articulated robot finger that’s seamlessly covered in living human skin.

There are many reasons why our current attempts to build humanoid robots with lifelike appearances always seem to end up somewhere in the uncanny valley, where their imperfect resemblance to real human beings invokes a strong negative emotional reaction from us. The way a humanoid robot moves certainly contributes to its not-quite-right appearance, but more often than not it’s the artificial materials used to recreate human skin that make humanoids especially creepy.

Because nothing says, "Not creepy," like a covering of human skin.

………

So we can either continue to work on improving artificial skin to make it more believable, or admit that there will never be a substitute and just use the real thing. That’s the route this team of researchers from the University of Tokyo has chosen, and in a recently published paper in the journal Matter, they detail a new approach for seamlessly wrapping a robotic finger in living skin tissue.

Seriously, this is a very bad idea.

I do not know how this will go wrong, but it will go wrong, and it won't be pretty.

Clearly, Self Driving Cars are Just Around the Corner

Arizona is working very, very, hard to make itself the go to location, largely by subsidies and lax regulations.

It appears that these efforts are beginning to annoy the locals, who have come to hate the rolling roadblocks:

Alphabet’s Waymo unit is a worldwide leader in autonomous vehicle development for suburban environments. It has said it would launch a driverless robo-taxi service to suburban Phoenix residents this year. Yet its self-driving minivan prototypes have trouble crossing the T-intersection closest to the company’s Phoenix-area headquarters here.

Two weeks ago, Lisa Hargis, an administrative assistant who works at an office a stone’s throw from Waymo’s vehicle depot, said she nearly hit a Waymo Chrysler Pacifica minivan because it stopped abruptly while making a right turn at the intersection. “Go!” she shouted angrily, she said, after getting stuck in the intersection midway through her left turn. Cars that had been driving behind the Waymo van also stopped. “I was going to murder someone,” she said.

This is literally the most self-driving car corner in the world. It's right next ti Waymo HQ, and it still does not work.*

The hesitation at the intersection is one of many flaws evident in Waymo’s technology, say five people with direct knowledge of the issues in Phoenix. More than a dozen local residents who frequently encounter one of the hundreds of Waymo test vehicles circulating in the area complained about sudden moves or stops. The company’s safety drivers—individuals who sit in the driver’s seat—regularly have to take control of the wheel to avoid a collision or potentially unsafe situation, the people said.

Suburban Phoenix, with its generally flat, straight roads and relatively light traffic, has been an ideal test location for Waymo and other developers of autonomous vehicles. Apple, which is working on its own self-driving car, recently set up a facility for testing prototype vehicles near Surprise, Ariz., west of Phoenix, according to a person briefed about the matter, a move that hasn’t previously been reported. (An Apple spokesman didn’t comment.) Uber was conducting tests in the area until it halted activity after a deadly collision in March.

But Waymo’s experience in the Phoenix surroundings is the latest evidence that it could be many years before fully autonomous vehicles replace human drivers, even in relatively easy driving environments, at any meaningful scale. While established automakers like Ford and GM, as well as startups like Aurora Innovation and Voyage, also are making incremental advances, the race to make such vehicles an everyday reality hasn’t progressed far beyond the starting line, say people in the field.

This is why self-driving car "experts" are suggesting things like basically banning pedestrians.

This stuff is not ready for prime time.

OK, I May Have Been Too Dismissive of AI

It appears that scientists have managed to create a machine that can assemble IKEA furniture in about 20 minutes.

Of course, it2 a few years to do the programming:

Singaporean scientists have asked the question: “Can robots assemble an IKEA chair?” and come back with enough of a “Yes” that The Register feels it time to call for robots to take this job away from humans. Pleeeease, robots. Take this job away from us!

The boffins behind this breakthrough, assistant professor Pham Quang Cuong and a team of students, all of Nanyang Technological University, were cognizant of previous attempts at unpacking flat-pack kit that had used bespoke kit. So they instead used off-the-shelf robots and open-source code like the Point cloud library and gave them the job of assembling a “STEFAN” chair.

………

The robots didn’t do all the work themselves - assistant professor Pham and his students laid out the parts for the bots to find. But once unleashed, the machines did the job in 20 minutes and 19 seconds with over half of that time spent on computing the required actions. Actual build time was nine minutes, a little less than the average human according to IKEA.

Success came only at the fourth attempt, a failure rate that would put IKEA out of business. Problems on early attempts included the bots breaking some parts.

………

The team's paper is here.  (paid subscription required)

No IKEA?

I'm feeling much better about the rise of the machines.

And Elon Musk is Overrated

After years of production problems resulting from automation issues that have been documented by legacy automobile manufacturers, Elon Musk has finally admitted that over-reliance robots and automation was a mistake, and has noted that "Humans are underrated".

This is what happens when someone thinks that they are smart enough to ignore lessons leaned over decades from auto manufacturing across the world:

In a rare mea culpa for the mercurial billionaire, Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that the company has been too reliant on robots for production.

Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2018

“Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake,” Musk wrote, responding to a Wall Street Journal reporter’s tweet. “Humans are underrated.” He also talked about this with CBS News’ Gayle King, adding “we had this crazy, complex network of conveyor belts….And it was not working, so we got rid of that whole thing.”

You know, if humans are underrated, and you admit to over-automating your assembly line.

If you have REALLY have learned your lesson, how ending your policy of treating your assembly line workers like complete sh%$?

And Arizona Understands Why California Banned Uber's Self-Driving Cars Now

And they have pulled Uber's self driving car permits:

Once again, Gov. Doug Ducey’s dislike for government regulation has resulted in injury to Arizona, this time with tragic result.

Ducey on Monday rescinded Uber’s ability to test its self- driving vehicles in Arizona, citing the video of last week’s fatal crash into a Tempe pedestrian.

“As governor, my top priority is public safety,” Ducey wrote, in a letter to the San Francisco-based company.

This from the same governor, who in 2015 signed an executive order aimed at enticing Uber to use Arizona’s roads as a guinea pig.

The same governor who in December 2016 crowed over Uber’s decision to bring hundreds of its driverless cars to Arizona for testing “due to California’s burdensome regulations.”

………

The Ducey administration actually bragged about its lack of oversight of driverless vehicles.

………

Earlier this month, Ducey went a step further, issuing a new executive order decreeing that self-driving cars no longer need a driver behind the wheel, as long as they follow all the traditional traffic laws and rules for cars and drivers.

"As technology advances, our policies and priorities must adapt to remain competitive in today’s economy,” Ducey said. “This executive order embraces new technologies by creating an environment that supports autonomous vehicle innovation and maintains a focus on public safety.”

Now Elaine Herzberg is dead.

………

It’s not the first time Ducey’s preoccupation with bypassing government has caused problems.

Remember Theranos?

Ducey and the Legislature in 2015 cleared the way for Theranos to operate in our state, pushing though a new law that allowed consumers to purchase lab tests from a company without a doctor’s orders.

California shut down Uber's self driving car program because they refused to get permits or report to regulators.

Even if you think that self-driving cars are just around the corner (I don't), and you feel that development of self driving cars should be accelerated (again, I don't), and that self driving cars will create a transportation utopia, Uber is a bad actor in their space, and they have ALWAYS been a bad actor in their space.

Smoothing the way for Uber is irresponsible and reckless.

Of Course it was Uber

Why am I not surprised that the first self driving care that ran down a pedestrian was an Uber:

Arizona officials saw opportunity when Uber and other companies began testing driverless cars a few years ago. Promising to keep oversight light, they invited the companies to test their robotic vehicles on the state’s roads.

Then on Sunday night, an autonomous car operated by Uber — and with an emergency backup driver behind the wheel — struck and killed a woman on a street in Tempe, Ariz. It was believed to be the first pedestrian death associated with self-driving technology. The company quickly suspended testing in Tempe as well as in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto.

The accident was a reminder that self-driving technology is still in the experimental stage, and governments are still trying to figure out how to regulate it.

Uber, Waymo and a long list of tech companies and automakers have begun to expand testing of their self-driving vehicles in cities around the country. The companies say the cars will be safer than regular cars simply because they take easily distracted humans out of the driving equation. But the technology is still only about a decade old, and just now starting to experience the unpredictable situations that drivers can face.

There will no doubt be an investigation, and unless I miss my guess, they will find that Uber cut some corners, and that this contributed to the accident.  It's a core part of their corporate DNA.

It's Called a Windshield Wiper

I saw an article talking about how Silicon Valley is a terrible place for testing self driving cars because the weather there is too good.

Of course there is not a whole bunch of snow there, but there are ski resorts about 100 miles away, and mountains, etc.

They also make the point that this is a tremendously difficult problem.

The truth is that it is not a big problem.  The solution is called a windshield wiper.

In fact, I spent nearly a year working on a windshield wiper system for the LIDAR sensor clear on the US Army's now canceled MULE (Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment ) program.

The windshield wiper was complex, because the sensor covered about 200 degrees, and the windows were faceted with sharp edges, and I had to design a linkage to make the wiper follow the profile, and EMI/RFI shielded cabling, and gas tight seals, etc. ………

This is not trivial, but the solutions are straightforward, and California can accommodate pretty much all of the environmental conditions with the exceptions of tropical rain forest and tundra.

The real problem with the self-driving cars being developed in Silicon Valley is that the Silicon Valley ethos simply does not work for things that have to work outside of a computer.

The debacles at Theranos and Juicero are classic examples as to what happens Silicon Valley tries to conquer the real world, it turns to complete sh%$.

There may be self-driving vehicles capable of driving on any road before I die, but they will not come from the minds of Google, or Tesla, or Uber.

It might come from the NSA, it might come from Detroit, but truly autonomous cars are not cute cat GIFs, so I don't expect them to come from the Randian supermen of Silicon Valley.

Prank Turned Research Project

Not the test, just a a prank in the vid

At the Virginia Tech, researchers have dressed up a card seat to evaluate public responses to unmanned cars:

Tech blogs went crazy over the weekend after a new self-driving car was seen rolling around Arlington, Virginia.

Unlike vehicles from Google Waymo, Uber and others, the car didn’t have any obvious signs of a Lidar array, the chunky imaging technology most autonomous vehicles use to gauge the state of the road ahead. Instead, it had just a small bar mounted on the dashboard, which blinked red when it was at a stop light and green once the cost was clear.

Even more intriguingly, the car appeared to be genuinely autonomous: there was no-one sitting in the driver’s seat. Typically, a human overseer is required in the testing phase to make sure that the car doesn’t go wild and run over a marching band, but somehow this car had managed to find a loophole.

………

But still a question remained. Who was behind this breakthrough new technology? How were they solving the problems that had stymied even the mighty Alphabet/Google/Waymo megacorp?

You’ve read the headline. You know the answer: it was a bloke dressed up as a car seat.

………

But one aspect of the rumour mill was correct: the guy really was associated with Virginia Tech. According to the university’s transportation institute, he was engaged in research about autonomous vehicles, likely gathering data about the reaction of normal drivers to sharing road space with a self-driving car.

I'm not sure if this was a real study, or just an excuse for some researcher to f%$# with fellow drivers.

My money on the latter.