In a bid to get in on the action and capitalise on the growing trend of AI technology, the UK government has just issued £8.1mil in funding to get ‘self-driving’ lorries out on motorways across Britain.
As terrifying as that may sound, having long since associated the combination of lorries and machines with the murderous cyborg from Terminator 2, parliament have given the go ahead and we should expect to see them on the roads by the end of 2018.
The partially manned lorries will operate in threes or ‘platoons’, with one vehicle being driven and controlled entirely by a human while the other two will follow behind connected to the main operator through wireless technology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=aLuVo37Uc-U
Though human drivers are present in all three vehicles, only one will be driving with the other two drivers acting as a failsafe option to intercept any problems that could occur should the technology fail (or if the machines decide to turn on us).
Much like chatbots and AI technologies in business and the consumer world, the concept of the trucks was built to work with humans not replace them entirely and, this way, one human operator is able to brake, accelerate and steer three trucks at a time.
