People always ask robotics expert Matt Mason of Carnegie Mellon University, “When is a robot going to change my life?” “I say, ‘It already has,’ ” he said. Robotic manufacturing is commonplace in the auto industry, Mason points out, and now you can buy cars that brake for you in emergencies, stay in the lane automatically or even park themselves. But few people consider those cars “robots.” A robot car may not be that far off. In an episode that sounds like science fiction, Google revealed in May that it had sent seven self-driving cars a combined total of more than 140,000 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles without anyone noticing.
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