3 ms·
> Autopilot in planes won't land the plane for you. For unmanned aircraft, autoland is an safety feature. After loss of link, an autopilot might be configured
by slavik81 9y ago
> Autopilot in planes won't land the plane for you.
For unmanned aircraft, autoland is an safety feature. After loss of link, an autopilot might be configured to land at a designated location, rather than just circling until it runs out of fuel and drops out of the sky. Though admittedly, crashing in a safe place is less serious when the vehicle has no people in it.
The Tesla autopilot needs much closer supervision than any of the autopilots I've worked with. That's more a result of its domain than of its sophistication, but it still makes me very uncomfortable with the name.
- chrisper 9y agoAutoland is also a safety feature for manned aircraft because it allows you to land in bad visibility or avoid accidents like the one at SFO a couple of years ago.
- greglindahl 9y agoExcessive reliance on features like autoland was actually the cause of that SFO accident, according to the NTSB.
- chrisper 9y agoBut ILS (the autoland system on ground) was disabled that day. Are we talking about two different incidents?
- greglindahl 9y agoNo, did you read the accident report which talked about the pilots being unable to land the plane because they were used to the computer doing most of the work?