Self-Driving Cars? Naw, Sign Me up for a Future Where We All Ride Intelligent Robotic Unicorns

It appears inevitable that someday most automobiles received’t include steering wheels, however who says an autonomous car has to seem like a standard automotive? XPeng, a Chinese maker of electrical automobiles, has proposed an alternate mode of autonomous transportation: a rideable robotic unicorn that gives not solely transportation but companionship too.

Years in the past, Boston Dynamics demonstrated the equal of a robotic pack mule referred to as BigDog that was designed to maneuver cargo throughout uneven terrains which can be unaccessible to wheeled automobiles and was greater than sturdy sufficient to hold human passengers. But the program was finally scrapped as a result of the robotic was simply too loud for navy maneuvers that usually wanted to be carried out in stealth mode. The expertise that powered BigDog later discovered its means into Boston Dynamics’ Spot: a four-legged robotic canine that was extra nimble and quiet. Unfortunately, Spot is just too small for anybody to climb aboard and journey it.

That’s to not say that folks haven’t tried turning Spot into an alternate technique of transportation. Adam Savage created a single-person rickshaw that Boston Dynamics’ $74,500 toy can simply pull round, however Spot merely wasn’t designed to ferry people round, so XPeng discovered a chance to fill that very particular area of interest via the corporate’s robotics division. (Does each automaker secretly have one now?)

The XPeng Robotic Unicorn is, sadly, lacking a extremely cool identify (c’mon, Pengasus was proper there) however it guarantees a future many people are very happy to enroll in proper now. The present prototype, which makes an look on the finish of this CG-heavy demo video, options AI applied sciences borrowed from XPeng’s autonomous car initiatives. The firm guarantees the unicorn will characteristic the power to acknowledge and monitor totally different objects permitting it to autonomously navigate varied terrains and environments, even whereas sustaining a jaunty prance, which is admittedly the primary characteristic I’ve been hoping autonomous automobiles would ship.

XPeng additionally guarantees the AI will imbue its robo-unicorn with the power to emotionally work together with whoever climbs aboard, which is a characteristic that not even Tesla is promising with its personal autonomous automobiles. Unfortunately, there appears to be no phrase on whether or not or not XPeng really plans to place the robo-unicorn into manufacturing. Further complicating my commuting fantasy is the very fact that the present prototype of the robotic unicorn is just scaled to accommodate kids as riders. Hopefully, the robotic’s design makes it simply scalable, as a result of a future the place I can’t proudly trot into the workplace each morning is a future I need no a part of.

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https://gizmodo.com/self-driving-cars-naw-sign-me-up-for-a-future-where-w-1847634880