Reply to post: Re: Dumb yanks

Robots will enable a sustainable grey economy

Warm Braw

Re: Dumb yanks

For the elderly, it's often a matter of freedom and quality of life rather than cost. My father continued to drive with dementia and burned out several clutches in the course of two years but would never contemplate taking a taxi because in his remote part of the coutryside it would mean booking a taxi several days in advance and at the same point confirming a pick-up time. The ability to do things spontaneously rather than at someone else's convenience has a value, particularly when your control over other parts of your life is slipping away.

Having an autonomous car collect the shopping is also not really what elderly people want - they don't want to be confined indoors seeing noone. And, indeed, how long are traditional shops going to survive?

Video chat with their friends and a delivery driver turning up periodically along with a postman and milkman would do a great deal more for many isolated elderly than an autonomous vehicle taking them on a solitary trip to the last supermarket not to fall to the might of Amazon.

A version of Skype running on a large screen on the wall that could be operated without continously swapping spectacles would make a much bigger difference at a much lower level of investment.

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