The Alberta Centre for Advanced MNT (microprocessor and nanotechnology) Products (ACAMP) has developed an autonomous security all-terrain vehicle which will be used to patrol the perimeter security fence at Edmonton International Airport in Alberta, Canada. The vehicle, which is unarmed, is controlled remotely by humans but is capable of driving autonomously, as it uses machine learning to perform its tasks.

The City of Sacramento, California has signed a deal with Phantom Auto to test autonomous vehicles in the city. The vehicles will be monitored by remote “drivers” sitting at computers in Silicon Valley, where Phantom Auto is based. The people monitoring the vehicles will be able to take control of the vehicle if its on-board computer system can’t figure out how to navigate the road. “I view this as another signature moment for our city,” says Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, via the Sacramento Bee. “It is a clear sign we are willing to step up and show the state and the country that we want to be on the forefront of new technologies.”

That our future includes self-driving cars is a given. Certainly, every auto manufacturer and urban planner is preparing, or thinking about preparing, for the day. But what form that future will take, and what our daily lives will look like as a result, remains ripe for prognostication.   In an interview with The New York Times, Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired magazine, cofounder of 3D Robotics and founder of DIY Robotics — in other words, someone who knows and thinks a lot about the world of autonomous vehicles — said he continues to be confounded by the fact that people so often ask him a question that, to his mind, hardly needs asking: What will people do inside driverless cars?  

Transport operator Stagecoach, bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis Limited (ADL), and technology company Fusion Processing will all work together to produce a single deck autonomous bus. Work on the ADL Enviro200 vehicle is being conducted at ADL’s site in Guildford, England, and the bus is expected to be ready for use by the end of this year. Once complete, the vehicle will be completely autonomous, capable of operating without a driver in an off-road environment. Additionally, the technology also delivers road safety benefits when driven in manual mode.