Design

Nuro's cute new autonomous delivery bot has airbags on the outside

Airbag or no airbag, getting bonked by one of these things will probably ruin your day.

As exciting as the future of autonomous mobility can be, it’s also a little bit harrowing — just watch this Tesla try to navigate traffic and tell me your heart rate didn’t spike. Given the unique challenges of enabling autonomous transit without catastrophe, safety features are going to need some rethinking too.

San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images

On that front, Nuro, with recently showcased its third-gen autonomous robot, is taking a novel approach to airbags, making a monumental shift and placing them — get this — on the outside.

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