Have you ever stopped to think about how “tomorrow” is going to get here, what it will look like, who’s driving it?

From the Editor—

This past Saturday, I was up at the high school with our Singularity Team, waiting for the latest FIRST Robotics Competition big reveal. A couple dozen students with a handful of adult mentors in one room: Do they hold the keys to our collective future? [1,2,3,4]

In the late 1990s when my partner and I were working with a business collective in Pittsburgh, along with Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University, on the development of a “city owned trade show” like they do in Europe, it was called “mobile robotics.” Things really honed in on “the Mars rover,” but it was felt that stuff was set in this arena and feared any big opportunity had already passed. [5,6,7,8]

No one says “mobile robotics” any more, it seems. Not wanting to date myself, I try not to say that any more either.

Years later, when my son was in middle school, I looked to see if there was a robotics club we could connect with here. “Too expensive,” we were told. Persisting a bit, we saw a pretty impressive group at one of the schools in Ypsilanti. But Saline wasn’t to become a part of that greater ecosystem until 2014. [9]

Back at my office, press releases were continuing to mount from the thick of things on behalf of CES in Las Vegas. In a lot of cases, agencies have put these together in such a way that all a media outlet has to do is paste their canned text for copy and plug in their nicely Photoshopped images without having had to go through the bother of actually attending, questioning, and reporting hands-on. [10]

Or, for that matter, even trying to understand the subject matter.

That’s too bad for readers. Organizations like our own Ann Arbor SPARK are on the ground in Nevada today to facilitate connections aimed at helping businesses create their own destinies on site at this well-oiled marketing machine. And that, in and of itself, isn’t as obvious as it once was. [10]

“Back in the olden days,” to borrow a setup frequently used by my Granny Reeves, everyone knew which exposition to go for, who’d be there, and why. Want to know about the latest and greatest in anything and everything related to “cars”? Go to the North American International Auto Show. Didn’t matter how those cars were driven — by you, me, or some sort of robot intelligence. [12,13]

Somehow we’ve moved beyond even such either-or constructs like a train passing a post. It’s not enough to talk in terms of “autonomous vehicles.” Ethics is in par with tech in those discussions. It’s not an isolated question, a transition question, or a question of backward compatibility en route: We need to talk infrastructure, and “smart cities.” [14,15]

A couple of months ago, that changed for me when I went to cover the Army Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence Symposium and Exposition, where Saline-based Quantum Signal. That was where the big picture got even bigger. [16,17]

Because self-driving vehicles have to be a whole lot better at problem solving when it comes to dealing with battlefield situations where no roads exist, logistics management a whole lot smarter when in comes to operating in theaters where city basics no longer exist to connect with them.

That’s an example of where things can go when you stop think about tomorrow. Feet planted firmly on the ground here in Saline, yes. But as home base, rather than walled fiefdom. Further to this instance, here’s what I found in one of the larger, and certainly the most trafficked and engaging displays on the floor near the Quantum Signal booth.

Macomb County had sponsored two FIRST Robotics Competition teams, running their stuff on a course for all to see, and one that they, themselves were driving. [18,19,20]

References

1. Saline Singularity Team 5066 (home page).
2. “Team Information: 5066 – Singularity” FIRST Inspires.
3. “FIRST Robotics Competition Game & Season Info” FIRST Inspires.
4. “2019 FIRST Robotics Competition Destination: Deep Space Game Animation” FIRSTRoboticsCompetition (January 5, 2019) YouTube.
5. Pittsburgh (home page).
6. University of Pittsburgh (home page).
7. Carnegie Mellon University (home page).
8. “Mars: Exploration Rovers” NASA: Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
9. “FIRST Robotics Competition 2019 season officially kicks off Saturday; here’s the background you need to follow it” Dell Deaton (January 3, 2019) Saline Journal.
10. CES: Consumer Technology Association (home page).
11. “Connect with SPARK at the Consumer Electronics Show 2019” (January 3, 2019) Ann Arbor Spark.
12. North American International Auto Show (home page).
13. “Self-driving cars: A level-by-level explainer of autonomous vehicles” Kyle Hyatt and Chris Paukert (March 29, 2018) c|net.
14. “Human Driving Manifesto” Human Driving Association.
15. “What is a smart city? | CNBC Explains” CNBC International (February 8, 2017) YouTube.
16. “Army Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence Symposium and Exposition” (November 28, 2018 – November 29, 2018).
17. Quantum Signal (home page).
18. Macomb County Michigan (home page).
19. “Team Information: 4810 – I AM Robot” FIRST Inspires.
20. “Team Information: 3539 – Byting Bulldogs” FIRST Inspires.