UNMANNED TRANSPORT AND THE REFORMATTING OF HUMAN NEEDS: NICHE AND EVOLUTIONARY SCENARIOS

Abstract

There are quite a few phenomena in human civilisation that could be compared to transport in terms of the scale and irreversibility of their impact on the development of society. The domestication of the horse and the invention of the wheel are rightly regarded as some of mankind’s greatest achievements. The current stage of transport development claims to be a Revolution 2.0: the advent of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GPS) has made it possible not only to locate but also to remotely control unmanned vehicles. In the near future, this could radically change both the transportation system and human life as a whole.The purpose of the article is to consider niche and evolutionary scenarios for the development of unmanned vehicles. It is proved that unmanned transport involves large scale and very similar transportation of homogeneous products in order to cover higher investment costs through economies of scale. In addition, such transport requires extreme predictability in the entire chain: from the receipt of raw materials to the delivery of the finished product to the end user. The accident intolerance of unmanned vehicles can be solved by creating an isolated transportation system along closed circuits in which there is no room for a person.The article notes that there is a non-zero probability that unmanned vehicles will not be able to outperform traditional transport in terms of their characteristics and will therefore only operate in certain market niches.