Robo-taxis are now driving around on the roads in Las Vegas

Autonomous public transport is becoming a thing and Las Vegas is the latest city to join the ‘robotaxi’ party.

A few days ago, a weird-looking robotaxi was spotted cruising around the streets of Sin City.

And this is just the start.

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It’s entirely possible we’ve already used a form of autonomous public transport without even realizing it.

The most likely scenario is the shuttle that some airports use to take passengers from one terminal to another, or from the car park to the terminals, and so on drives autonomously.

Then we’ve got actual robotaxis, ie self-driving ride-hailing services, such as Waymo, which is currently operational in parts of San Francisco and certain areas of Phoenix, Arizona.

And now there’s another player in this particular game, Zoox.

A subsidiary of Amazon, which as we all know is heavily invested in autonomy and robotics at the moment, Zoox wants to become the self-driving equivalent to Uber.

It uses the same basic principle.

You summon the car, and it picks you up from point A and takes you to point B.

For the time being the project is still in its pilot phase, with test vehicles in San Francisco and, as we can see here, Las Vegas.

This is both for safety reasons and also for practical and technical purposes.

But it seems autonomous ride-hailing services are ready to take over.

Even Tesla is having a go at it, with the upcoming robotaxi, ‘Cybercab’, which is likely to be unveiled in the summer.

Of course, we’re still years away from mass adoption.

A point that was recently proven by the fact all it takes is a guy wearing a t-shirt with a ‘STOP’ sign on it, for a self-driving car to stop.

They’re clever, but not that clever…yet.

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