Autonomous vehicles for all intensive purposes are "here". It will take some time with testing and regulations but there will be interesting impacts when considering some of the issues that plague transportation today.
According to Industry Week and Moody's Investor Service, there could be a significant upside to robots with the near-term demographic time bomb in Japan and Germany.
I toured the Los Angeles Times last week and was impressed with the automation. Although newspapers seems like an old business, it was impressive in pure size and volume with minimal people.
According to the Material Handling & Logistics, robots are slashing U.S. wages and worsening pay inequality. That is certainly a provocative statement! According to new research by MIT's Daron Acemoglu and Boston University's Pascual Restrepo, one additional robot per thousand workers reduces the employment to population ratio from .18 percentage points to .34 percentage points and slashes wages from .25% to .5%.
Last week, I went on a fascinating tour of the L.A. Times operations. It was quite impressive - and massive. Did you know the L.A. Times has has the largest operation in the U.S.? They print for the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and others in addition to the L.A. Times.