Check Out This Kawasaki Mule Autonomous Prototype + Video

While you likely won’t be seeing one at your local dealer anytime soon, we recently caught a glimpse of a Kawasaki Mule autonomous vehicle prototype that we thought was well worth sharing.

Kawasaki engineers are working on some pretty interesting autonomous vehicle technology (including helicopters), but as this is an ATV/UTV website, the autonomous Mule is what caught our eye.

We can see the Mule in two different videos on Kawasaki’s YouTube channel. In the first video, the Mule is shown navigating off-road trails without a driver in the cockpit. You can check that one out for yourself right here. There is little description about what is going on here, but it’s at least interesting to see.

The second video offers a little more insight into Kawasaki’s autonomous vehicle plans. This video has Kawasaki explaining future needs for moving people and goods autonomously. We don’t see the Mule until a bit later in the video. This time it is in a warehouse setting rather than off-road trails. You can see the video yourself below.

Kawasaki seems to see some viability with autonomous vehicles and touched on the subject in a recent press release.

“With many potential commercial applications in terms of use by emergency services and in extreme environments, the self-driving MULE showed that the R&D department is seeing future technology potential within the diverse range of products being offered by Kawasaki both now and in the future and is 100% focused on continuing to deliver Good Times,” said Kawasaki.

So this all leads us to wonder if we will ever see an autonomous Kawasaki Mule working on a ranch or in a warehouse any time soon. We aren’t holding our breath. However, if you look a little further into the future, it starts to sound a little less like science fiction.