Robotic driving instructors are here to make lessons less stressful
RoboCoach will teach you how to drive and call you ‘mommy’ while doing it
Driving instructors might soon be joining the list of jobs to be replaced by AI in the near future. A company in China has developed an AI-powered driving instructor called RoboCoach, and it’s already being used in driving schools.
Unfortunately, RoboCoach is not a humanoid robot that sits next to you and criticizes your driving skills (although that would be awesome). The digital driving instructor developed by Beijing Yi Jia Jia Technology is actually a teaching and safety control system integrated into the vehicle.
The other ways in which RoboCoach differs from human driving instructors are even more amusing, though. RoboCoach will address you as “mommy” or “daddy,” which is surprisingly unthreatening for a robot with a name that evokes images of RoboCop.
“Xiaoyi, am I pretty?” asks the presenter in a RoboCoach demonstration video.
“Daddy is the most handsome, mommy is the prettiest!” RoboCoach answers in a high-pitched, childish voice.
Aside from voice, the system uses a dashboard screen and a smart rearview mirror to communicate with the learner. RoboCoach uses sensors to brake if the car runs into an obstacle or accelerates suddenly for no reason, similar to how self-driving cars operate.
