Self-driving strollers and hands-free pickup trucks: What could possibly go wrong?

The latest development in humanity’s ongoing quest to exert less effort has arrived: a self-driving baby stroller.

Like most parents, I was always appalled that after diapering, swaddling and hoisting my helpless, labor-intensive meat sack of an offspring into a stroller I then had to engage in the degrading act of “pushing.” Along the sidewalk or grocery store aisle I would shove our primitive four-wheeled infant-transport device, muttering things like, “What is this, the Stone Age or something?”

Well, it appears our long international nightmare of having to manually move these baby wheelbarrows is over. At this year’s CES, the always-buzzy annual consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, the world met Ella, an artificially intelligent stroller with an “Advanced Parent Assist System” that power-assists going uphill or over grass and brake-assists going downhill. As Gluxkind, the Canadian company behind the stroller, says on its website: “Don’t Push, Just Steer.”

Yes, robot-controlled stroller, please take the child I love so much

It’s perfect for the parent who thinks, “I love my child, but pushing her in a regular nonmotorized stroller is mildly annoying, so you bet I’ll plop her in this tiny car driven by a robot! What could possibly go wrong?”

The cost of these new AI strollers is only $3,300 – a remarkably low price to pay for something that will probably almost definitely not endanger your child while also keeping you from unnecessarily burning the calories needed to press the start button on your self-driving pickup truck.

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Steering is for boomers!

Wait, did I not mention the self-driving pickup yet? If you’ve watched any televised sporting events lately, you might have seen an ad for GMC’s Sierra Denali showing seemingly intelligent people in the truck slapping their knees and clapping their hands along to Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” The whole knee-and-hand-clapping bit happens because the pickup has "Super Cruise driver assistance technology," which allows hands-free driving.

In the same way strollers once required pushing, pickups and other fast-moving vehicles have long required hands-on steering. But apparently that got in the way of people doing more important things, like slapping their knees and clapping their hands to classic rock songs using the energy they gained from not having to push their strollers.

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Who ever heard of an electronic device malfunctioning?

Of course, the Gluxkind stroller, like the sort-of-self-driving GMC truck, includes all manner of safety features. When the stroller detects the weight of a child, it provides motorized assistance only if a parent is pushing. The stroller will self-propel – moving on its own without the parent pushing – only if there’s no child in the seat.

In the pickup, among other things, there’s a camera that monitors whoever’s driving to make sure they aren’t taking their eyes off the road.

Like most consumers, I’m familiar with the infallibbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbility of electronic devices, so I’m sure everything’s perfectly safe. The fact that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported last June that vehicles with driver-assistance systems were involved in nearly 400 crashes over about a one-year period was probably just a computer glitch of some sort.

Get hip to the times and trust technology to live life for you

Anyhoo, the question any consumer needs to ask is: Do you want to be one of those luddites whose baby stroller requires the archaic act of pushing? Can you seriously handle the embarrassment of driving your pickup with one or both hands on the wheel while your passengers joyfully slap their knees and clap their hands as the late Freddie Mercury sings, “You got mud on your face, you big disgrace”?

Heck no. We live in the age of allowing electronic things to do stuff that might accidentally cause us to move. Is it possible an Amazon delivery drone might cross wires with your AI stroller and cause your child to be delivered to someone in a neighboring town who ordered dog food?

Probably not. But if that happened, you’d just hop in your Sierra Denali and hope it didn’t drive you off a bridge while you were slapping your knees and clapping your hands en route to retrieving your kid.

Trust the system, folks. Everything’s going to be just fineeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee … dammit.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook: facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

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