(Automated) Trucking all over the world

America's military will soon be recruiting electronic drivers

THE automation of driving is proceeding apace—to the point where some American states now allow robot vehicles (with human drivers on board in case anything goes wrong) to be tested on public roads. 

But armies, too, are interested in automatic automobiles. 

Anything that preserves soldiers’ lives is welcome, and that is particularly so when they might lose those lives not in the heat of battle but in the humdrum business of delivering supplies.

Military drivers, though, have to deal with problems beyond those that make civilian driving hazardous. The average commute or school-run, even in the most dangerous parts of an American city, is rarely subject to booby traps, ambuscades or attack by rocket-propelled grenades. 

Nor, despite the macho, four-wheel-drivers of suburban sports-utility vehicles, do most such trucks spend much time off-road in the way that an army truck bedliner is likely to. 

The problem of automating military vehicles, then, is a hard one. But Oshkosh Defense, a firm based in Wisconsin, is having a go.