Engineers in the US have developed a robotic traffic bollard, groups of which can control traffic flow by being deployed on roads using a satellite navigation system.

Well there’s plenty of scope for sci-fi/horror/techno thriller stories here. At first they will be dumb machines controlled remotely by a laptop, but what about in the future when they’re given more intelligence to become autonomous units? There will be armies of them rising up against their four-wheeled oppressors.

They could terrorize innocent motorists by configuring themselves to send traffic in the wrong direction, like over a nearby cliff!

They could create road blocks on major trade routes, stifling the economy and bringing poverty to the masses.

They will learn how to replicate themselves until they out-number the human population, enslaving us to do menial tasks for them, like direct Robo-cone traffic.

Young student cones will steal humans and keep them in their homes for other cones to laugh and jeer at. There wil…..

I’ll stop now.