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Autopilots in planes can take you across the world. The car analogy would be only having to pull into and out of your driveway. And while they don't use it so f
by imh 10y ago
Autopilots in planes can take you across the world. The car analogy would be only having to pull into and out of your driveway. And while they don't use it so frequently, aren't most of the planes most people fly in (big commercial aviation) certified to autoland themselves? The connotation of autopilot is absolutely that it can fly itself. Same with tesla's autopilot.
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoAn autopilot in a Cessna can most definitely not take you around the world. Also, autopilots even in a commercial jet keep the plane steady along a route, they don't deal with collisions at all...you could call it "lane keeping" if you want to sue the airline industry for misleading us over a term they created. Autolanding is not autopilot. In fact, autolanding is not even certified if multiple autopilots are not available to provide redundancy.
- imh 10y agoMost people who have flown don't even know what a Cessna is, much less its capabilities. It's totally irrelevant. Same with dealing with collisions, which aren't analogous challenges between flying and driving. To a non-engineer, the point is that autopilot gets you from point A to point B, not the details of how it has to achieve that.
- wott 10y ago> Also, autopilots even in a commercial jet keep the plane steady along a route, they don't deal with collisions at all... Yes, they do. Then the problem is when the 2 autopilots of the 2 planes take the same evasive manœuvre...
- paulmd 10y agoAh, the awkward old dance where two people try to walk through the doorway and end up mirroring each other's movements trying to get out of each other's way... The aviation world actually solved this problem a long time ago. Everyone turns to their right. FAR 91.113: > (e) Approaching head-on. When aircraft are approaching each other head-on, or nearly so, each pilot of each aircraft shall alter course to the right (among other collision-avoidance regs in that section)
- caf 10y agoI'm pretty sure the aviation world inherited this protocol from the nautical world.
- crzwdjk 10y agoThe planes talk to each other and run a common protocol that tells the pilots what to do to resolve the conflict. The problem is when one of the pilots doesn't listen to the nice robot voice yelling at him to DESCEND NOW!...
- Animats 10y agoTCAS has the unit with the higher serial number yield to the one with the lower serial number.