robots are the next step, but to get there you have to clean up the infrastructure, a lot. Industrial robots need a laboratory clean environment in order to recognize car parts by color, outline/shape, and uses other visual guides to install...
one thing we have been talking about at school is (and a lot of engineers seem to be thinking this) a new highway system that uses electrical induction/magnetism to power cars, just like the electric high speed trains developped in Germany and being installed in China. But it would be an advancement on this technique.
Of course people still drive cars, and we need to replace them with computers, so that you can replace your bottle necks and send commodities racing down the road at 500 kph instead of 50.
This would work in north america where there are such huge distances... what you would have it what appears to be roads, but with wire buried inside controlled by computers.
This would put an end to traffic accidents, impaired driving, and almost eliminate drive times, and eliminate a lot of unnecessary driving too. A frictionless road/car system would also eliminate our need for oil, bearings, axles, all of which wear out. We would see that system employed first in the big cities...
at least thats my pipe dream
the area around the road would have to be cleaned and monitored by machines as well, but you can bank your bottom dollar on any technology that eliminates moving parts and people.
in order to properly control a system like that, everyone would have to be intimately tied into it. The system would monitor your habits, your diet, what you like to buy, and shuffle goods around so that your preferences were always near by.
also, the upfront cost for a system like this would be out the window, but it was the same for the first cell phones.
