"Tessy" only the beginning

[SpoonerandForker]

Heard of a Beechcraft KingAir pilot who did such a thing - the door between the cockpit and the cabin swung shut and locked. The pilot's trusty Swiss Army knife came in handy removing the hinges from the door.

Two points for Victorinox!

...and can send you back home if traffic is too tight.

Or perhaps, send you back to work if you try to go fishing?

[dp]

I've yet to see what problem self-driving cars solve. And based on the number of mishap videos of self-driving cars on Youtube I'd rather not be sharing the road with these things.

[RB211]

As a centrally controlled system? Sure. MUCH easier. And that will probably be the endpoint on it..... The city traffic computer tells your vehicle what to do, when to do it, and can send you back home if traffic is too tight.

And thats EXACTLY what Google wants, control of the traffic, among everything else.

[J Tiers]

....
On a car, your dealing with a few magnitudes more complexity, your using artificial vision to decipher where you are on the road. The algorithms involved for that are simply mind boggling. How can the car autopilot be programmed for every single situation that arrises? IT CANNOT. Something that is NOT typical, like in this fatal accident with the truck. The truck was not where it was supposed to be, bright sun and truck color combination made it hard for the artificial vision to decipher what it was. Self driving cars are a joke, not until every single road in this country is setup like a slot car track.

Many of the systems already fail miserably on a gravel road. Just. Don't. Work.

When that happens, the best case scenario is that the vehicle just refuses to move. And that is not a particularly good scenario in most cases.

Remember, there are many road situations where a person is puzzled as to where to go. Program for that one?

And, think about the opportunities for gridlock with a horde of these vehicles. Somehow they have to co-ordinate and find the best overall solution FOR THAT PARTICULAR ROAD CONFIGURATION AND SET OF VEHICLE POSITIONS. Goof luck with that. It's possible, but NOT likely as autonomous vehicles.

The entire idea is, for the moment, hubris. Dunno that I want to be on the road with these things. Certainly not wanting to be an early adopter on them.

As a centrally controlled system? Sure. MUCH easier. And that will probably be the endpoint on it..... The city traffic computer tells your vehicle what to do, when to do it, and can send you back home if traffic is too tight.

[Weston Bye]

- The "auto pilot" is just a fancy cruise control, not a "set it and head into the back to make a sandwich" thing.

Doc.

Heard of a Beechcraft KingAir pilot who did such a thing - the door between the cockpit and the cabin swung shut and locked. The pilot's trusty Swiss Army knife came in handy removing the hinges from the door.

[RB211]

Simpler environment, plus decades of development and a systems price that is probably over the cost of most new cars and you still need trained professionals to monitor and take over when needed. One of the reasons I've been skeptical of all the hype for driver-less cars.

The system costs, don't forget in Aviation, everything is inflated... 100,000$ for a windshield, 100,000 for one of the displays, 80,000$ for a fire bottle should you discharge one, the computer in the avionics bay, just for the A/C electrical system is 500,000$. The autopilot composes many separate systems, so the system cost most likely would buy out your entire block in your neighborhood.
If you removed the costs for liability insurance, remove lawyers from the equation, and FAA certification, then your probably looking at 50 to 100k for the cost.
Everything in aviation is leased. Every component on the airplane is modular, almost everything in the cockpit is "plug and play." When a switch fails on a radio, the entire radio panel comes out, gets sent out for refurbishment, and a new one is plugged in. However, if the trim switch on the yoke fails, then you'll see the mechanic having to hand solder in a new one, the switch is glued into the yoke, and yoke doesn't simply come out.
From what I can see on an airliner, it appears that the autopilot system on the CRJ that I fly is mostly just cascading PID algorithms. The inputs to the algorithms are simple data streams. Vertical velocity, G forces, headings, tracks, GPS track, Altitude, airspeed, etc.
On a car, your dealing with a few magnitudes more complexity, your using artificial vision to decipher where you are on the road. The algorithms involved for that are simply mind boggling. How can the car autopilot be programmed for every single situation that arrises? IT CANNOT. Something that is NOT typical, like in this fatal accident with the truck. The truck was not where it was supposed to be, bright sun and truck color combination made it hard for the artificial vision to decipher what it was. Self driving cars are a joke, not until every single road in this country is setup like a slot car track.

[A.K. Boomer]

The autopilot in an airplane is a useful aid and has NEVER assumed the role of PILOT IN COMMAND. The autoassist in the vehicle is the same. It was missused by the driver. The driver is soley at fault.

Just Darwin thinning the gene pool of idiots.

You need to check into some of the cars being designed and tested that do not have a brake peddle or steering wheel,

try being a motorcycle rider and "making eye contact" with that one at an intersection...

[George Bulliss]

Autopilots on airliners mess up all the time, and its much simpler environment to design a system for.

Simpler environment, plus decades of development and a systems price that is probably over the cost of most new cars and you still need trained professionals to monitor and take over when needed. One of the reasons I've been skeptical of all the hype for driver-less cars.

[SpoonerandForker]

The autopilot in an airplane is a useful aid and has NEVER assumed the role of PILOT IN COMMAND. The autoassist in the vehicle is the same. It was missused by the driver. The driver is soley at fault.

Just Darwin thinning the gene pool of idiots.

[Rosco-P]

Yeah, you'd have to call it a screw up, but OTOH the computer is never drunk, coked up, yakking on the phone, putting on lipstick or eating a burger while it drives.

Lets make autopilot mandatory in all new vehicles, so all the above mentioned activities become acceptable behavior while operating a two ton killing machine.
If you're drunk in an auto-piloted vehicle, is it still drunk driving?

[Doc Nickel]

They said the truck was hard to see because it was light colored against a similar color sky.

-Bullsh*t. The driver was- had to have been- not paying attention. Either he had simply laid his head back and was listening to music, or he'd actually fallen asleep like that one fellow somebody got pictures of a few weeks ago. Or he was reading a book, or playing with his phone or tablet, or screwing with the car's dash screen or whatever.

There is no possible way the truck was lit just right as to appear invisible to anyone that was even paying a minimal amount of attention.

Add that to the fact the car, as I understand it, looks for objects at about waist height and below for collision avoidance, as the truck was straddling the lane, the car essentially didn't "see" it.

Tragic, yes. But a rare and unlikely set of conditions, with the end result entirely the fault of the driver. The "auto pilot" is just a fancy cruise control, not a "set it and head into the back to make a sandwich" thing.

Doc.

[danlb]

They said the truck was hard to see because it was light colored against a similar color sky. Add a little glare and isn't that the same reason people run into trucks?

Most of the cars with autopilot use radar as well as visible light to map out their surroundings.

Dan

[TGTool]

Yeah, you'd have to call it a screw up, but OTOH the computer is never drunk, coked up, yakking on the phone, putting on lipstick or eating a burger while it drives.

[A.K. Boomer]

yeah pretty much my point - gonna get crazy with 300 million+ of them on our future roadways...

[RB211]

Autopilots on airliners mess up all the time, and its much simpler environment to design a system for.