Originally Posted by
iahflyr
I ride a Waymo (driverless taxi) several times a week and it is absolutely the biggest quality of life increase for me in 2023. It’s way safer than taking an Uber. If you haven’t taken one, try it sometime when you are in LA, SF, or Phoenix.
If I order from Uber Eats, my order is often delivered from a delivery robot. No human involved. No tip required. It makes food delivery cost actually pretty reasonable.
How much of this stuff was commercially available 5 years ago? None. Now, does that mean the job market for ride-share drivers and food delivery drivers has changed. Not really. It will someday, but even that still has a ways to go.
Commercial airplanes without any pilots onboard is a long ways away, but that doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen. Technology moves fast.
Waymo is a million times simpler than a pilotless aircraft, and every Waymo is restricted to a very small ODD. And even then they still need human intervention multiple times a day. No-one flying today will ever witness pilotless transport category airplanes during their careers.
The technology Waymo uses is not new, it was well known 5 years ago. These days the funding to attempt it is available, but it is not commercially viable. The problem is, that technology does not scale as far as they need it to. It's a technological dead end.