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Pilot here. Airplanes have autopilot. While on autopilot you are still expected to be monitoring the flight and take control at a moments notice. Autopilot does

Pilot here. Airplanes have autopilot. While on autopilot you are still expected to be monitoring the flight and take control at a moments notice. Autopilot does not allow the pilot to take a nap or go in the back and party with the flight attendants. Autopilot is the correct term. I'm tired of always having to cater to the lowest common denominator.

seanmcdirmid 10y ago
The problem is that most consumers, like parent poster, do not really understand what pilots do, or that an autopilot simply holds the course steady (in the simplest form, at least). Combine ignorance with misguided self-righteousness, and we get...this mess.
- phire 10y ago
  Not to mention, plane autopilots don't have to worry about traffic.
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    The pilots still do, though.
notyourwork 10y ago
Because your industry has coined a term to mean something different from the literal meaning doesn't assert its the proper use the term. Auto implies automatically, it doesn't give any average consumer the indication that there needs to be manual involvement. I get it that pilots monitor stuff when planes are on auto pilot. That doesn't mean its correct for other industries.
detaro 10y ago
Curious, what is "take control at a moments notice" in seconds? From what I've read about aviation, situations where really fast, let's say <2 seconds, reaction to an unusual situation is necessary don't seem very common compared to car traffic? (Excluding starts and landings, even if a plane can do those on autopilot the pilots certainly are going to be fully attentive) It seems like an airliner flying at altitude has quite large safety margins compared to a car on a highway.
- kpao 10y ago
  Tell that to a pilot who's had an autopilot failure where a servo went crazy all of a sudden. You better act quick, especially in low visibility situations, to turn it off, or pull the circuit breaker. It might happen a bit slower than in a car, but the consequences can be much more dramatic.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    Especially considering that the pilot has been trained to react to an autopilot failure, while a driver hasn't been. There is just no excuse for using that particular term for this particular technology.
  - lightcatcher 10y ago
    > the consequences can be much more dramatic How are the consequences much more dramatic while flying? I can think of plenty of scenarios while driving where you go from perfect autopilot conditions with no visible risks to death of passengers or pedestrians in <5 seconds.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    Even if the plane started falling down like a rock, you still have more time to react than a driver of a car where a tyre burst at 80mph and now the car is heading towards the incoming lane/rock face on the other side. You literally might have less than few seconds to impact and I imagine that if you weren't holding the steering wheel at the time, you won't be able to do anything.
  - makomk 10y ago
    Errm, I'm pretty sure the car equivalent of that would result in the vehicle swerving towards the side of a bridge at 70+ MPH, with very little chance of reacting quickly enough to turn it off. A car on the highway really doesn't have that much in the way of safety margins.
- Someone 10y ago
  I wouldn't call it larger safety margins. Many if not most of the cases where car drivers should take action are survivable if they don't; that's different for pilots in airplanes. Pilots typically have more time to react, though (astronauts lie even further away along this axis; in cases where astronauts can take action to save their lives, they typically have even more time, but also, in many cases, there's no action that will save them) As to the "take control at a moments notice": that's where the problem lies. The arguments in "Ironies of Automation" (https://www.ise.ncsu.edu/nsf_itr/794B/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf https://www.ise.ncsu.edu/nsf_itr/794B/papers/Bainbridge_1983...) such as "By taking away the easy parts of his task, automation can make the difficult parts of the human operator's task more difficult" haven't lost any of their power in the 30+ years since it was published. Because of that, I doubt the typical driver will be able to handle emergency situations, as it will require frequent training.
kpao 10y ago
Pilot here as well, unfortunately, it's a fight that won't be easy to win. If in the mind of people, Autopilot means self driving. It's going to be hard to change the global perception. When I'm using the Autopilot, I feel like I'm in my airplane, always on guard, and in a practice of recovery from unusual attitude in flight. There are a few times also where being an engineer has helped a lot. You can pretty much predict the situations where the car will run into issues and conflicts ahead of time, just by looking at the scenario in front of you. It's something that the majority of population is not trained to do. Now having said that, I used to own a BMW X5 with Adaptive Cruise Control, and that car was also doing some pretty stupid things at times, especially when cars in front were moving out of the way. The car would suddenly think the way was clear and floor the accelerator...
- nojvek 10y ago
  Have a RAV4 2016 SE. Great car, sonars and cameras everywhere but still very stupid driving at times. I don't mind it, because it keeps me alert to take over at moments notice. I really want to hack the can bus and give it more smarts. What is the legality of that?
  - lawpoop 10y ago
    So what is the benefit of this sort of autopilot? It sounds like it's driving except without going through the motions.
    - sjwright 10y ago
      You are freed from continually making stupid rote inputs to match the speed of the driver in front, allowing you to apportion a bit more focus to the road further ahead. Further, it makes the bulk of motorway driving less fatiguing. When you're not having to personally intervene to slow down when the driver in front chooses to go a few kays slower than you, it's nowhere near as irritating.
  - Tepix 10y ago
    That's exactly what comma.ai is doing, isn't it?
CamperBob2 10y ago
Autopilot is the correct term. I'm tired of always having to cater to the lowest common denominator. Ask 99 out of 100 people who aren't pilots, but who might be Tesla customers, and see if they can recite what you wrote below: While on autopilot you are still expected to be monitoring the flight and take control at a moments notice. Autopilot does not allow the pilot to take a nap or go in the back and party with the flight attendants. And how do you know all that? Because you were trained accordingly. I'm not saying Tesla shouldn't offer the feature in their cars. I'm saying they shouldn't have named it after a feature that people think allows pilots to party with the flight attendants.
- jfoster 10y ago
  Shouldn't what matters be how many people become actual Tesla owners using autopilot without realising this? For that metric, I suspect the answer is much closer to 0.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    Well, the answer clearly isn't 0, as you could tell if you'd opened a newspaper recently, watched the news, or read the link. Human factors are a thing. And it's a little scary that some guys who build rockets and plan Mars missions on the side don't seem to understand that.
    - jfoster 10y ago
      It's not clear that the crashes have been people who misunderstood the capability of the system. To me, it seems more likely that they got lazy and put a bit too much faith into it. I'm not saying it's not a problem, just that it's a lot more complicated than what Tesla decided to name the feature. I think the accidents that have occurred would have occurred regardless of what they named it.
ams6110 10y ago
Your average car driver gets a few weeks of training at age 15 or 16 and a cursory written test. What does a pilot get?
- Retric 10y ago
  You can solo fly at age 16 after ~30 hours in an aircraft, so about the same. Also, many students take drivers ed. Now commercial flying is far more involved, but so is driving big rigs.
- ClassyJacket 10y ago
  Wow what country are you in where you only get a few weeks of training? It's a year+ in Australia.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    USA.
    - aljones 10y ago
      Which states don't first issue learner's permits? I had one for a year.
      - blackguardx 10y ago
        You don't get issued a learner's permit if you are over 18 in most states that I am aware of.
        aljones 10y ago
        Oh, that is probably right. I didn't think about that.
  - petepete 10y ago
    Same in the UK. There's no mandatory number of hours lessons you need to accumulate before taking your test; if you (somehow) pass having had no lessons at all you're good to go.
ClassyJacket 10y ago
I have no involvement with aviation and I thought autopilot was a perfectly good word for it. I thought it communicated well that it basically just tries to maintain what it's doing but can't stop on its own.
tmptmp 10y ago
>>Autopilot is the correct term. I'm tired of always having to cater to the lowest common denominator. Your argument fails as the analogy of car drivers with airplane pilots fails on various grounds. a. The airplanes, which provides autopilot facility, their pilots have to undergo more rigorous and stringent training than what a ordinary car driver has to undergo b. for different types of airplane autopilot systems the pilots have to undergo different types of trainings (you have not mentioned what kind of autopilot you have used, but I'd doubt if your autopilot training on one type of plane will automatically certify you to drive all kinds of auto-pilot planes out there, even within the same airplane category) c. what Tesla is doing is on one hand it is saying (in fact, screaming in its adverts) that "we are bringing autopilot in cars", "we are bringing autopilot in cars" but when it actually is bringing just a driver assistance system and when that causes accidents, Tesla is putting blame on the customers for not understanding what is autopilot. This is not fair, as Tesla does NOT put any requirement for more rigorous and stringent training for its drivers the way airplane manufacturers/airliners put. So, Tesla is playing with the lives of not only its drivers but also of the other road users. You are welcome to counter-argue my points. But this too much hoohaa about auto-pilot by Tesla and the subsequent bad publicity it is going to bring them is not good for them. People will not be subtle then because Tesla is not being subtle in their adverts now. edit : typo
- prostoalex 10y ago
  There are no specific requirements on avionics training. As long as you have been endorsed for a specific class and type of aircraft, you can fly one, even if the aircraft used for checkout had a different type of autopilot (or none at all). Things obviously converge with more complex aircrafts, as it would be quite difficult to find, let's say, two Airbus A320 with drastically different stacks, but some of them, like Cessna 172 Skyhawk, have been in production since 1956, with aircraft technology making quite a progress in those 60 years. If all your training has been done on a 1956 Cessna 172, is it wise to operate a 2016 model without sufficient training? No. Legal? Yes. > Tesla does NOT put any requirement for more rigorous and stringent training for its drivers Beyond saying "Don't take tour hands off the wheel and be prepared to take over any moment" what kind of training would you envision them offering outside of [insert state name] Driver's Handbook? Most states already offer free defensive driving courses as well.
wibr 10y ago
The technology to realize an autopilot in a car and in a plane is very different though, they might provide similar functionality to the pilot/driver but in a car it's a much more complex and much less reliable system, involving machine learning etc.. On this layer the systems are not really comparable.
gambiting 10y ago
Even in this extremely professional environment that is an airplane cabin, where people are trained to keep watch over the autopilot, people still don't follow procedure: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24296544 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24296544 Over half of pilots admit to sleeping while on autopilot. These are people who had to take months and years of training to fly. Meanwhile,to be a driver you need to drive for 15 minutes and do some basic manouvers. In some places of the world, not even that. And we hope that those people will "keep an eye on the road" while the autopilot feature is running? It sounds great in theory, but it's not going to happen. We need a system that can operate completely without human supervision - but that ain't happening any time soon either.
varjag 10y ago
If you win this war on colloquial use, can you fix hacker vs cracker thing next? Unfortunately fighting how the words end up used is pretty hopeless.
Vik1ng 10y ago
How often does another plane pass you by a few feet and you have a split second to react?

seanmcdirmid 10y ago

The problem is that most consumers, like parent poster, do not really understand what pilots do, or that an autopilot simply holds the course steady (in the simplest form, at least). Combine ignorance with misguided self-righteousness, and we get...this mess.

phire 10y ago
Not to mention, plane autopilots don't have to worry about traffic.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  The pilots still do, though.

notyourwork 10y ago

Because your industry has coined a term to mean something different from the literal meaning doesn't assert its the proper use the term. Auto implies automatically, it doesn't give any average consumer the indication that there needs to be manual involvement. I get it that pilots monitor stuff when planes are on auto pilot. That doesn't mean its correct for other industries.

detaro 10y ago

Curious, what is "take control at a moments notice" in seconds? From what I've read about aviation, situations where really fast, let's say <2 seconds, reaction to an unusual situation is necessary don't seem very common compared to car traffic? (Excluding starts and landings, even if a plane can do those on autopilot the pilots certainly are going to be fully attentive) It seems like an airliner flying at altitude has quite large safety margins compared to a car on a highway.

kpao 10y ago
Tell that to a pilot who's had an autopilot failure where a servo went crazy all of a sudden. You better act quick, especially in low visibility situations, to turn it off, or pull the circuit breaker. It might happen a bit slower than in a car, but the consequences can be much more dramatic.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Especially considering that the pilot has been trained to react to an autopilot failure, while a driver hasn't been. There is just no excuse for using that particular term for this particular technology.
- lightcatcher 10y ago
  > the consequences can be much more dramatic How are the consequences much more dramatic while flying? I can think of plenty of scenarios while driving where you go from perfect autopilot conditions with no visible risks to death of passengers or pedestrians in <5 seconds.
- gambiting 10y ago
  Even if the plane started falling down like a rock, you still have more time to react than a driver of a car where a tyre burst at 80mph and now the car is heading towards the incoming lane/rock face on the other side. You literally might have less than few seconds to impact and I imagine that if you weren't holding the steering wheel at the time, you won't be able to do anything.
- makomk 10y ago
  Errm, I'm pretty sure the car equivalent of that would result in the vehicle swerving towards the side of a bridge at 70+ MPH, with very little chance of reacting quickly enough to turn it off. A car on the highway really doesn't have that much in the way of safety margins.
Someone 10y ago
I wouldn't call it larger safety margins. Many if not most of the cases where car drivers should take action are survivable if they don't; that's different for pilots in airplanes. Pilots typically have more time to react, though (astronauts lie even further away along this axis; in cases where astronauts can take action to save their lives, they typically have even more time, but also, in many cases, there's no action that will save them) As to the "take control at a moments notice": that's where the problem lies. The arguments in "Ironies of Automation" (https://www.ise.ncsu.edu/nsf_itr/794B/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf https://www.ise.ncsu.edu/nsf_itr/794B/papers/Bainbridge_1983...) such as "By taking away the easy parts of his task, automation can make the difficult parts of the human operator's task more difficult" haven't lost any of their power in the 30+ years since it was published. Because of that, I doubt the typical driver will be able to handle emergency situations, as it will require frequent training.

kpao 10y ago

Pilot here as well, unfortunately, it's a fight that won't be easy to win. If in the mind of people, Autopilot means self driving. It's going to be hard to change the global perception. When I'm using the Autopilot, I feel like I'm in my airplane, always on guard, and in a practice of recovery from unusual attitude in flight. There are a few times also where being an engineer has helped a lot. You can pretty much predict the situations where the car will run into issues and conflicts ahead of time, just by looking at the scenario in front of you. It's something that the majority of population is not trained to do. Now having said that, I used to own a BMW X5 with Adaptive Cruise Control, and that car was also doing some pretty stupid things at times, especially when cars in front were moving out of the way. The car would suddenly think the way was clear and floor the accelerator...

nojvek 10y ago
Have a RAV4 2016 SE. Great car, sonars and cameras everywhere but still very stupid driving at times. I don't mind it, because it keeps me alert to take over at moments notice. I really want to hack the can bus and give it more smarts. What is the legality of that?
- lawpoop 10y ago
  So what is the benefit of this sort of autopilot? It sounds like it's driving except without going through the motions.
  - sjwright 10y ago
    You are freed from continually making stupid rote inputs to match the speed of the driver in front, allowing you to apportion a bit more focus to the road further ahead. Further, it makes the bulk of motorway driving less fatiguing. When you're not having to personally intervene to slow down when the driver in front chooses to go a few kays slower than you, it's nowhere near as irritating.
- Tepix 10y ago
  That's exactly what comma.ai is doing, isn't it?

CamperBob2 10y ago

Autopilot is the correct term. I'm tired of always having to cater to the lowest common denominator. Ask 99 out of 100 people who aren't pilots, but who might be Tesla customers, and see if they can recite what you wrote below: While on autopilot you are still expected to be monitoring the flight and take control at a moments notice. Autopilot does not allow the pilot to take a nap or go in the back and party with the flight attendants. And how do you know all that? Because you were trained accordingly. I'm not saying Tesla shouldn't offer the feature in their cars. I'm saying they shouldn't have named it after a feature that people think allows pilots to party with the flight attendants.

jfoster 10y ago
Shouldn't what matters be how many people become actual Tesla owners using autopilot without realising this? For that metric, I suspect the answer is much closer to 0.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Well, the answer clearly isn't 0, as you could tell if you'd opened a newspaper recently, watched the news, or read the link. Human factors are a thing. And it's a little scary that some guys who build rockets and plan Mars missions on the side don't seem to understand that.
  - jfoster 10y ago
    It's not clear that the crashes have been people who misunderstood the capability of the system. To me, it seems more likely that they got lazy and put a bit too much faith into it. I'm not saying it's not a problem, just that it's a lot more complicated than what Tesla decided to name the feature. I think the accidents that have occurred would have occurred regardless of what they named it.

ams6110 10y ago

Your average car driver gets a few weeks of training at age 15 or 16 and a cursory written test. What does a pilot get?

Retric 10y ago
You can solo fly at age 16 after ~30 hours in an aircraft, so about the same. Also, many students take drivers ed. Now commercial flying is far more involved, but so is driving big rigs.
ClassyJacket 10y ago
Wow what country are you in where you only get a few weeks of training? It's a year+ in Australia.
- ams6110 10y ago
  USA.
  - aljones 10y ago
    Which states don't first issue learner's permits? I had one for a year.
    - blackguardx 10y ago
      You don't get issued a learner's permit if you are over 18 in most states that I am aware of.
      - aljones 10y ago
        Oh, that is probably right. I didn't think about that.
- petepete 10y ago
  Same in the UK. There's no mandatory number of hours lessons you need to accumulate before taking your test; if you (somehow) pass having had no lessons at all you're good to go.

ClassyJacket 10y ago

I have no involvement with aviation and I thought autopilot was a perfectly good word for it. I thought it communicated well that it basically just tries to maintain what it's doing but can't stop on its own.

tmptmp 10y ago

>>Autopilot is the correct term. I'm tired of always having to cater to the lowest common denominator. Your argument fails as the analogy of car drivers with airplane pilots fails on various grounds. a. The airplanes, which provides autopilot facility, their pilots have to undergo more rigorous and stringent training than what a ordinary car driver has to undergo b. for different types of airplane autopilot systems the pilots have to undergo different types of trainings (you have not mentioned what kind of autopilot you have used, but I'd doubt if your autopilot training on one type of plane will automatically certify you to drive all kinds of auto-pilot planes out there, even within the same airplane category) c. what Tesla is doing is on one hand it is saying (in fact, screaming in its adverts) that "we are bringing autopilot in cars", "we are bringing autopilot in cars" but when it actually is bringing just a driver assistance system and when that causes accidents, Tesla is putting blame on the customers for not understanding what is autopilot. This is not fair, as Tesla does NOT put any requirement for more rigorous and stringent training for its drivers the way airplane manufacturers/airliners put. So, Tesla is playing with the lives of not only its drivers but also of the other road users. You are welcome to counter-argue my points. But this too much hoohaa about auto-pilot by Tesla and the subsequent bad publicity it is going to bring them is not good for them. People will not be subtle then because Tesla is not being subtle in their adverts now. edit : typo

prostoalex 10y ago
There are no specific requirements on avionics training. As long as you have been endorsed for a specific class and type of aircraft, you can fly one, even if the aircraft used for checkout had a different type of autopilot (or none at all). Things obviously converge with more complex aircrafts, as it would be quite difficult to find, let's say, two Airbus A320 with drastically different stacks, but some of them, like Cessna 172 Skyhawk, have been in production since 1956, with aircraft technology making quite a progress in those 60 years. If all your training has been done on a 1956 Cessna 172, is it wise to operate a 2016 model without sufficient training? No. Legal? Yes. > Tesla does NOT put any requirement for more rigorous and stringent training for its drivers Beyond saying "Don't take tour hands off the wheel and be prepared to take over any moment" what kind of training would you envision them offering outside of [insert state name] Driver's Handbook? Most states already offer free defensive driving courses as well.

wibr 10y ago

The technology to realize an autopilot in a car and in a plane is very different though, they might provide similar functionality to the pilot/driver but in a car it's a much more complex and much less reliable system, involving machine learning etc.. On this layer the systems are not really comparable.

gambiting 10y ago

Even in this extremely professional environment that is an airplane cabin, where people are trained to keep watch over the autopilot, people still don't follow procedure: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24296544 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24296544 Over half of pilots admit to sleeping while on autopilot. These are people who had to take months and years of training to fly. Meanwhile,to be a driver you need to drive for 15 minutes and do some basic manouvers. In some places of the world, not even that. And we hope that those people will "keep an eye on the road" while the autopilot feature is running? It sounds great in theory, but it's not going to happen. We need a system that can operate completely without human supervision - but that ain't happening any time soon either.

varjag 10y ago

If you win this war on colloquial use, can you fix hacker vs cracker thing next? Unfortunately fighting how the words end up used is pretty hopeless.

Vik1ng 10y ago

How often does another plane pass you by a few feet and you have a split second to react?