I’m really excited about the coming fleets of self-driving cars. I dislike driving with an intensity, am prone to road rage, and in general would rather be sleeping than driving. With that in mind, you can see why I want everyone to jump on board with self-driving cars — accidents would disappear. Insurance rates would plummet. No one would get lost unless they wanted to. I only have one issue. The shape of these cars are just like other cars.
What if the direction (front, back, top, bottom, side) of the car, so important up until now, was removed? What if all directions were possible, because roads changed to meet the new abilities of cars that drive themselves? Road work would be done by drones, and could probably be done in a matter of years.
If you’ve not seen BB-8, the new droid from Star Wars, the Force Awakens, you have not seen the Sphero, the ball-shaped, remote-controlled toy. There’s little reason why we could not have cars that were essentially scaled up versions of the Sphero. Our compartment would keep us entertained as we rode, and we could even see the environment outside, if we wished. But the most efficient way to do this is to seal us inside a resilient rubberized material, maybe in a web-like form that one could peek through. AT any rate, I think with the problem of self-driving resolved, we can move on to redesigning the driving experience itself to one that is safety, navigation, and conservation minded.
These balls would protect the driver in an impact better than any other design, because the extreme maneuverability and agility of the design allows for the quickest moves out of danger to safe places, and bouncing two together would be like bumper cars, or pinball.
They would be the greatest all-terrain vehicle.
If we could accept this idea, we might also consider how it might change flight. We have normalized drones and remote flight in our homes. There is no reason that the Google Car could not be prop-shielded, so that it could fly too.
This is an opportunity. We should consider the social, design, and other aspects of this advent for self-driving.
