We've been living in the future now for at least a decade, and while the iPhone is a pretty amazing Star Trek communicator, crucial technological leaps promised to us by our popular culture - amazing holograms, the jet pack and hoverboard, decent voice recognition, virtual reality - have pretty much singularly failed to deliver.

And yes, while life is great, I still feel a pang of bitterness when stuck in traffic, cursing the lack of a flying car. I still resent the fact that trees are chopped down with chainsaws, when light sabers would clearly do a better, more energy efficient job. And don't even get me started on what the lack of an everlasting gobstopper does to me sense of self worth.

Luckily, Abu Dhabi has gone out and developed a driverless electric pod that will whisk you from place to place, guided by the wisdom of the cloud rather than the madness of man.

These silent little robotic bubbles will move people around Masdar zero-energy city project, which is coming along nicely, as Crane Country reported in pictures yesterday.

Our reporter who took these shots on a trip to Masdar yesterday said the pods seemed to be cruising around just fine, despite the lack of a human being actually driving them. The future looks like a wonderful place, and I can't wait to live in it.

Worth noting is that the widely-held dream of being able to remain in bed while the bed drives you all the way to work before you have to wake up is now officially one step closer to reality. We'll get there, if we believe in it with our hearts and minds.