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"Autoautomobile" is too clumsy, so how about "autocar"?

Later on, when they get really smart and start doing unmanned item delivery and shopping trips and passenger pickup all on their own, we can call them "robocars". Law enforcement robocars with weapon systems can be called "robocops" (or maybe "enforcement droids"?).



We'll probably end up calling them cars. Car itself coming from "horseless carriage".


Maybe should distinguish between levels of automation:

0-automobile: must be pulled around by external power source

1-automobile: provides its own locomotion

2-automobile: also provides its own navigation

3-automobile: also decides when it should be used (what trips to take, in what order)


4-automobile: doesn't carry a person, goes on it's own sight-seeing trips.


That would be the Google street view car?


last time I saw one (at Kinkos) it had a human behind the wheel.

  me: "hey! how many lenses!?"
  him: "I cant talk about it."
  me: "eh. how's the res?"
  him: "I cant talk about it."
  me: "ah. Can you say how far you drove today?"
  him: "no"
  me: "are they listening now?"
  him: (jokingly) "maybe."


really smart unmanned weaponized enforcement droids ... sounds a lot like the standard sci-fi drone.


When robocars and flying drones have converged into airdroids proper, they'll probably develop networked fleet intelligence for coordinated tasks and strategic planning. They'll be really useful then, with their aerial range covering all our airspace.

At that point I guess we can call them "Skynet" or something like that?




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