How will RoboCars work, and when will we have RoboCar's?
We're collectively past 2001 and we don't have flying cars, nor video-phones (well, except for FaceTime or Skype), nor AI driven space ships orbiting Saturn, nor most of the other predictions of Science Fiction. The future isn't exactly what we thought it would be, eh? The RoboCar vision described by Brad Templeton and others is a plausible vision of the future, if for no other reason than the multiple efforts underway at universities and corporations around the world working to develop parts of the RoboCar vision. It seems like it's just a matter of time and continued technology development for the ideas to become real.
In Templeton's vision, RoboCars will have on-board camera, RADAR and GPS systems to have a virtual map of the terrain & traffic around the car. Using these data inputs the RoboCars will be able to detect other vehicles, pedestrians, bicyclists, road blockages and more, and be able to drive in any existing traffic condition. He can speak confidently about this because the Google Self-Driving Car project has already logged well over 160,000 miles of driving an automated car (under human supervision) on regular city streets. When fully developed Templeton envisions human occupants of RoboCars kicking back to relax or talk with family members, while the car drives them around the city. Additionally, RoboCars could drive themselves around town even with no human occupants, and such uninhabited cars could be part of a car sharing program, or act as an automated delivery vehicle for stuff bought online from a store.