> intercontinental planes are mostly autonomous This is a highly disingenious use of the word autonomous. Airplane "autopilots" are given a set of waypoints an

> intercontinental planes are mostly autonomous This is a highly disingenious use of the word autonomous. Airplane "autopilots" are given a set of waypoints and will fly a straight line between those. That's been possible with cars since (at least) the 1960s too; today it's easy enough that you could give it as an end-of-term project for a bunch of robotics undergrads. It's also completely useless outside of very specialized situations like the mining dump trucks you mention.