while true

Robo-Cars Make Cruise Control So Last Century:: NY Times on robotic cars. They mention only large car makers which are slow adapters of technology. This is mainly because their production cycles are very long. A new technology that Toyota decides to buy might be able to get into the 2008 or 2009 line of cars.

Personally, the biggest motivation is the 50,000 deaths which occur in car accidents yearly just in the US. Automation in driving would also affect city planning, traffic, productivity, and a number of other areas.

The article makes no mention of technologies already developed in universities, such as NavLab at CMU.