How About Automating Scooters for Another Vehicle No-One Really Wants

There is only one form of transportation available to humans which is easier than riding a scooter and that's walking ... but ... scientists at M.I.T. have now invented an automated scooter along with extensions of vehicle automation in general.  (Science Daily:  Driverless cars, golf carts, now joined by autonomous scooter)

This appears to be part of the general theme of sucking the interactive joy out of Every Damn Thing ... and it is ... but the interesting part is the automated vehicle concept as a whole insofar as this is much like the electoral process in which it doesn't need any particular logic, it just needs to trend on Twitter.

Example:

The researchers had previously used the same sensor configuration and software in trials of autonomous cars and golf carts, so the new trial completes the demonstration of a comprehensive autonomous mobility system.  A mobility-impaired user could, in principle, use a scooter to get down the hall and through the lobby of an apartment building, take a golf cart across the building's parking lot, and pick up an autonomous car on the public roads.

- Science Daily

Ed:  sounds like the scientist has been trippin' with the sea snails.  (Ithaka:  Sea Snails on Acid)

You've got that right.  Someone who is 'mobility-impaired' is going to go through all those steps to go somewhere??  Why not add a few more steps and make it hopelessly impossible instead of probably impossible.

There is one standout problem with being in a wheelchair and what is that?

Yes, getting in and out of the damn thing.  When you're messed up, transferring into the wheelchair is a formidable task yet this model assumes people with such impairment will flip from one mode of transportation to another with relative ease.

This sounds quite a bit like the 'spam in a can' concept which so riled the early NASA astronauts because they had no control of their spacecraft:

The researchers' system includes several layers of software: low-level control algorithms that enable a vehicle to respond immediately to changes in its environment, such as a pedestrian darting across its path; route-planning algorithms; localization algorithms that the vehicle uses to determine its location on a map; map-building algorithms that it uses to construct the map in the first place; a scheduling algorithm that allocates fleet resources; and an online booking system that allows users to schedule rides.

- Science Daily

The article goes into it quite a bit more than is presented here and no need to continue as no doubt you have picked up the contemptuous vibe at Ithaka.  The science looks quite clever but it doesn't look all that intelligent.  A whole lot of things change if you have ever needed a wheelchair yourself.

In my own experience, once I was in the wheelchair I was set.  To take me anywhere, the wheelchair would get locked down to the floor of a van and I would be driven somewhere, almost always by the G Man, still in the wheelchair.  On arrival anywhere, I would be unlocked from the van's floor and then could roll about or be rolled about as necessary for surgery, testing, etc.

Moving in any way was extremely painful so hopping between three different forms of transportation would have had one immediate result:  I would not have done it and probably would not have been able to do it.