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Will 2024 (finally) be the year of the autonomous vehicle?

Safety remains the paramount metric for autonomous vehicle deployment, yet there has to be industry consensus on how to adequately measure a robotic or human driver's safety.

One environment in which the dream of autonomous vehicles has turned into reality is off-road, where conditions are often hazardous, and jobs tend to fall into what academics call “the three Ds”: dangerous, dull, and difficult. For years, companies like ASI, Caterpillar, and Komatsu have deployed autonomous solutions in such industries as agriculture, construction, and mining and have found that robots’ more efficient operations often reduce the environmental impact of these sectors as well. One specific pain point I expect Tesla to announce is what I’ll call “FSD Supercharge”: Drop your car in a queue where it waits and then rolls up to the next available charger, where someone plugs and unplugs your vehicle, and it returns to you fully charged.

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