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Comment by jameshart | Hacker News Reader

Is "robotaxis" the word we're going with here? Because that sounds more like it ought to be the name for a subfield of robotics relating to optimizing the physical arrangement or orientation of robots...

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Chemotaxis is the behavior of a small organism to follow a chemical gradient to find a higher concentration. Likewise, thermotaxis follows temperature. It took me several rereads to realize that robotaxis wasn't some kind of behavior that followed a "robot gradient".

Both ultimately from Greek τάξις, although not very closely connected in meaning at all!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi#Etymology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxis

By contrast, "Thurn and Taxis" is apparently "from the Italian word for 'badger'" (!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurn_und_Taxis

Not to be confused with Taxidermy, the art of stuffing vehicles in lifelike poses.

Or dermitaxis, the art of aligning oneself according to the skin color gradient.

As a curiosity, only for Italians or foreigners that are at an advanced level in learning Italian:

http://www.scudit.net/mdtasso.htm

>fu difficile stabilire il tasso da pagare; cioè il tasso del tasso del tasso del Tasso e il tasso del tasso del tasso barbasso del Tasso.

I wish we could adopt "autos" as the term. You would think that something called an automobile would be able to drive itself.

You can even buy an automatic automobile, and it still needs someone to drive it. We should sue for false advertising.

But soon you may be able to get an automated automatic automobile, and maybe not need someone to drive it anymore!

Well, OK, depending on the self-driving level...

You can even get a full self driving autopilot automatic automobile and still need someone to drive it

In India an "auto" is a three-wheeler autorickshaw, commonly known in English by its Thai name tuktuk. The "auto" here means it's motorized, as opposed to the original human-powered vehicles, this being the literal meaning of the Japanese jinrikisha (人力車).

They are just auto autos, or auto^2.

Brad's been calling them both "robocars" and "robotaxis" since 02009: https://ideas.4brad.com/robocars-bringing-you-flying-cars

My first thought was plants slowly moving towards robots.

I was confused about "robot-axis" for a solid two minutes before I realized the article is about "robo-taxis".

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