Trends Identified

Autonomous Vehicles

The rise of the automobile transformed modern society. It changed where we live, what we buy, how we work, and who we call friends. As cars and trucks became commonplace, they created whole classes of jobs and made other professions obsolete. We are now on the cusp of an equally transformative technological shift in transportation: from vehicles driven by humans to vehicles that drive themselves. The long-term impact of autonomous vehicles on society is hard to predict, but also hard to overstate. The only certainty is that wherever this technology becomes ubiquitous, life will be different than it was. Google and other companies have been testing self-driving cars for several years now, with good success. These autos process vast amounts of sensory data from on-board radars, cameras, ultrasonic range-finders, GPS, and stored maps to navigate routes through ever more complex and rapidly changing traffic situations without any human involvement. Consumer use of vehicles with autonomous capabilities, however, is just beginning. Adoption will proceed gradually, through the steady implementation of increasingly intelligent safety and convenience features in otherwise ordinary cars. Some models, for example, already offer hands-off parallel parking, automatic lane-keeping, emergency braking, or even semi-autonomous cruise control. Last October, Tesla Motors made available a software package that enables a limited form of self-driving operation for owners of its vehicles to download. This trend is likely to continue as such technology matures and as legal and regulatory barriers start to fall. A half-dozen states have already authorized autonomous road vehicles, and more have plans to do so. Discussions are well underway among auto insurers and legislators about how to apportion liability and costs when self-driving cars get into crashes, as they inevitably will—although it is widely expected that these cars will prove to be much safer, on average, than driver-operated cars are today. There is plenty of room for improvement on that front. In the United States, crashes and collisions claim more than 30,000 lives and cause some 2.3 million injuries annually. Self-driving systems may have bugs—the software that runs them is complicated—but they are free from the myriad distractions and risk-taking behaviors that are the most common causes of crashes today. In the near term, semi-autonomous safety systems that engage only to prevent accidents, but that otherwise leave the driver in charge, will also likely reduce the human cost of driving significantly. Far more profound transformations will follow once cars and trucks can be trusted to pilot themselves routinely—even with no one inside. Exclusive car ownership could then cease to be the necessity of modern living that it is today for so many people. Shared cars and driverless taxi and delivery services could become the norm. This transition might help the aged and infirm—an increasing fraction of the population—to “age in place” more gracefully. Shared programmable vehicles could reduce the need for local parking structures, reduce congestion by preventing accidents and enabling safe travel at higher speeds and closer following distances, and unlock numerous secondary benefits. Like every technology, autonomous vehicles will involve drawbacks as well. In some distant day, commercial driving may no longer be a sustainable career. Shared vehicles raise some thorny privacy and security concerns. In some regions, increased affordability of car access may greatly exacerbate traffic and pollution problems rather than easing them. But the many benefits of self-driving cars and trucks are so compelling that their widespread adoption is a question of when, not if.

2016

Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2016

World Economic Forum (WEF)

Autonomous vehicles

Autonomous driving is another area of significant disruption. Autonomous vehicles are already tested on the road, with a significant degree of automation built into the Tesla software. Autonomous driving could thus be associated with limited lock-in effect as vehicles simply receive ‘softwareupdates’ as the technology matures. The range of estimates on the impact of autonomous vehicles is wide, from rebound effects actually increasing oil demand to positive estimates suggesting up to a 40% efficiency gain across all road transport.

2018

The bigger picture- The impact of automation, AI, shared economy on oil demand

The 2° Investing Initiative

Autonomous vehicles

Autonomous driving will be facilitated by the data-processing capabilities of machine learning, but its disruption capabilities are so widespread that Delaney considers it a separate category.

2017

5 big disruptive trends investors should watch

Morgan Stanley

Autonomous things

Whether it’s cars, robots or agriculture, autonomous things use AI to perform tasks traditionally done by humans. The sophistication of the intelligence varies, but all autonomous things use AI to interact more naturally with their environments. Autonomous things exist across five types: Robotics Vehicles Drones Appliances Agents Those five types occupy four environments: Sea, land, air and digital. They all operate with varying degrees of capability, coordination and intelligence. For example, they can span a drone operated in the air with human-assistance to a farming robot operating completely autonomously in a field. This paints a broad picture of potential applications, and virtually every application, service and IoT object will incorporate some form of AI to automate or augment processes or human actions. Collaborative autonomous things such as drone swarms will increasingly drive the future of AI systems Explore the possibilities of AI-driven autonomous capabilities in any physical object in your organization or customer environment, but keep in mind these devices are best used for narrowly defined purposes. They do not have the same capability as a human brain for decision making, intelligence or general-purpose learning.

2018

Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2019

Gartner

Autonomous Systems and Robotics

As the information revolution continues, there will be a pervasive and dramatic growth in the role of unmanned, autonomous and intelligent systems. These systems will range in size from meshes of small sensors and personalised robots, which replicate human behaviour and appearance, to a cooperative plethora of intelligent networks or swarms of environmental-based platforms, with the power to act without human authorisation and direction.

2010

Global strategic trends - out to 2040

UK, Ministry of Defence

Autonomous Ships and submarines

Example of Organizationsactive in the area: Leidos (US), Boeing (US), Rolls Royce (UK).

2018

Table of disruptive technologies

Imperial College London

Autonomous Robots/Drones/ Vehicles – The Rise of the Machine

The robotics market is highly dynamic now, companies outside the classical robotics market invest and with China, a new international player has emerged. Hardware costs will go down and light-weight materials and 3D printing will allow to create new and cheaper models faster than before. Battery and energy efficiency will be a decisive factor. Robots are now able to learn and they have gained flexibility, speed, and manual finesse. The advances in data processing will free robots from former computing restraints. Advanced sensors, voice recognition, and machine learning algorithms will drive the interactivity of robot and human-robot collaboration will make major breakthroughs including voice, face, emotional and behavioral recognition. For now, robots have no broad understanding of the context nor the environment and they do not understand complex human behavior. Empathy seems to be out of scope for now but would have with big implications for employment and the future of work and life. Industrial robots will increasingly use intelligent features such as predictive analytics, self-learning and swarm behavior. Developments are adaptive robots with scanning and sensor technologies, 3D printing, high level semantics, collaboration with operator and new human-machine interfaces. Professional service robots will mostly found in medical, field, and entertainment but increasingly in classical services such as butler, kiosk, service robot. The ratio of connected and autonomous cars will rise fast. Nontraditional tech companies are gaining traction in the very technology that makes cars run, such as driver assistance systems, dashboard functions and autonomous driving and mapping. Drones in all variants are now a stable technology with demand rising mainly around agriculture use cases, delivery, remote maintenance as well as asset and inventory tracking. Personal robots are developed for household/daily care, assisting functions, and multipurpose work. They still have problems with most daily tasks, which will need an-other 10 years of development.

2018

Trend Report 2018 - Emerging Technology Trends

SAP

Autonomous robots

Robots will eventually interact with one another and work safely side by side with humans and learn from them. These robots will cost less and have a greater range of capabilities than those used in manufacturing today.

2015

Nine Technologies Transforming Industrial Production

Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

Autonomous robotic surgery

Example of Organizationsactive in the area: Intuitive Surgical (US), Verb Surgical/Alphabet/Johnson & Johnson (US), Da Vinci Surgery (US).

2018

Table of disruptive technologies

Imperial College London

Autonomous passenger aircraft

Example of Organizationsactive in the area: Airbus (France), Boeing (US).

2018

Table of disruptive technologies

Imperial College London