Can't Resist Cute

This Best Mile video does a nice job of explaining the convenience and behind-the-scenes rationales of driverless public transport. You will find yourself in a world where publicly-available transit is best. And the video is cute, which kept me watching.

Olli and Watson: a beautiful friendship and restaurant recommendations

ZDNet came out with a wonderful article about the role of Watson in Local Motors' Olli shuttle vehicle. Watson is a now-mature creation of IBM (International Business Machines) that started life with a win over humans on the game show Jeopardy. It went on to ace the MCATs (medical equivalent of the SATs in the US) and have a flourishing career in industry. Learned and up to date, Watson is helping out Olli, its autonomous vehicle pal from Local Motors, to humanize the machine/person interactions in driverless shuttles.

So Watson will greet passengers, answer questions about restaurants in the area, and help with directions. Watson has also been trained to understand a diversity of accents and to calm down cranky passengers. It will call an off-site supervisor if anger management is necessary. 

Add sensors and voila ...

Plus, all this self-driving stuff is super easy because college students are taking average cars and turning them into driverless ones. This is at an Arizona program, but soon it could be someone's garage. Perhaps a slight exaggeration.