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Most people are lucky to drive a year without a costly mistake. Put them in the air, and their mistake (or a self-driving mistake) means death. And even if we

• dreamcompiler 7y ago
  Disagree. Autopilots for aircraft have been proven technology for 100 years. It's a dramatically easier problem because there are many fewer edge cases, more degrees of freedom for the control system to exploit, no fixed roads to follow, and less traffic. And with widespread use of transponders, aircraft talking to each other is already common. It's still considered future technology for cars.
  • benj111 7y ago
    A plane autopilot isnt really the same as full self driving though. You might be right but in the flying car future we'll have millions of flying cars doing the daily commute, all trying to land in the middle of a city. So I guess flying cars will be like normal cars, the easy bit is the middle bit, either flying in well defined lanes, or driving on the motorway. The hard bit is at either end.
    • y4mi 7y ago
      > So I guess flying cars will be like normal cars, the easy bit is the middle bit, either flying in well defined lanes, or driving on the motorway. Not that easy considering that at least two Tesla's were totaled driving themselves on a motorway... One by straight up running into a splitting lane and another just ignoring a truck and driving into it.
      • benj111 7y ago
        Stopping an aeroplane stalling is supposed to be easy too. I guess easy is relative whether for cars or planes.
  • reacweb 7y ago
    Take off, landing and cruising are easy to automate. IMHO, the single purpose of a pilot is to handle failures. The experience (for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447) shows that it is difficult to react correctly when inputs are unreliable and that many crash are avoided thanks to smart (and creative) pilots (see Hudson landing).
    • blauditore 7y ago
      > Take off, landing and cruising are easy to automate. Agree with take off and cruising, but landing is magnitudes more complex, at least much more difficult for humans. Do you have a source that this is reliably automated? > many crash are avoided thanks to smart (and creative) pilots (see Hudson landing). Actually, the emergency plan in case of engine failure after take off always gets discussed on ground before each start, along with defining an emergency landing area. So I would assume the Hudson river often gets scoped in those preflight discussions, even though such incidents rarely ever happen. Source: I took flight lessons a long time ago.
      • pedrocr 7y ago
        >Agree with take off and cruising, but landing is magnitudes more complex, at least much more difficult for humans. Do you have a source that this is reliably automated? I believe all modern airliners are capable of fully automated landings as long as the airport supports them. To the point where automated systems can land in zero visibility where pilots are incapable of doing a manual landing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system#ILS_categories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system#ILS_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland These systems are so precise I've read they had to add a random factor to the landing location as the planes were all touching down on the exact same spot and damaging the runway. This has been the case for a long time now. The landings are all still initiated by the pilots but there doesn't seem to be any fundamental technical reason fully automated flights couldn't be done today. But since we still require pilots to handle failures it's best to keep them in the loop instead of dumping a broken state with a huge workload when the automation happens to fail.
• harperlee 7y ago
  On the other hand, software that manages traffic in the air automatically might be much more simple. No kids suddenly crossing the street, no traffic deviations due to construction, no obsolete system of signalling that can be manually overriden by any construction worker, etc.
  • starpilot 7y ago
    Indeed, this is why UAVs preceded unmanned cars. See the DARPA Grand Challenge.
  • onemoresoop 7y ago
    No unpredictible flying things like birds, no invisible wind gusts, no air currents, clear trajectories, etc
    • bdamm 7y ago
      Birds already do most of the work to avoid collisions, and automated control of low-flying "cars" can work if there's a good system of coordination (ADS-B++) and "lanes". Yes, we can have lanes, which I imagine will exist in layers above freeways. Of course there will be times where weather shuts down the air traffic, but with computer control of the aircraft's navigation they could be usefully integrated into the national highways and airspaces.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• unrealhoang 7y ago
  Isn't it going to be easier to be safe on the sky as there's much more space, i.e. collision rate will be much much lower?
  • jacobolus 7y ago
    Small planes flown by amateurs are extremely unsafe compared to most kinds of transportation.
    • A2017U1 7y ago
      It's about the same if not less dangerous than riding a motorcycle. https://inspire.eaa.org/2017/05/11/how-safe-is-it/ https://inspire.eaa.org/2017/05/11/how-safe-is-it/
      • jacobolus 7y ago
        Riding a motorcycle is extremely unsafe.
    • dreamcompiler 7y ago
      It's highly correlated with pilot experience, and it's not monotonic. Pilots with 20 hours are pretty safe because they are scared of everything. Pilots with 2000 hours are extremely safe because of their experience. Pilots with 200 hours are quite dangerous because they're complacent and overconfident. https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Zone-Second-How-Pilots/dp/0071798404/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=killing+zone https://www.amazon.com/Killing-Zone-Second-How-Pilots/dp/007...
  • crispyambulance 7y ago
    > collision rate will be much much lower? I agree that colliding with other flying cars is going to be rare. The issue is that when there's a failure of any kind, you can't just "pull-over" in a flying car. You need to land. Flying cars just aren't going to be a big market, IMHO, in the foreseeable future. Pilots need to be qualified, and even then, they need to be in a place that can truly accommodate flying vehicles-- the middle of nowhere. And if you're going to that, you might as well buy an actual plane rather than an all-in-one hot mess of a flying car.
• dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >Most people are lucky to drive a year without a costly mistake I think most people manage to go at least a few years between anything more than door dings.
• tannerc 7y ago
  Undoubtedly you're right: getting flying cars to work is an unfathomably difficult task. But does that mean it truly will "never" happen? I imagine saying we'll never see flying cars reach mainstream is akin to those who once thought attaching a motor to a horse carriage would never work (though, to your point, the triumph of the motorized vehicle has brought disastrous outcomes along with its benefits)[1]. It's hard to see the future when all we've got is the past and present to evaluate it by. And yet, we've had private aircraft for hundreds of years and that's gone reasonably well. Scaling that private fleet up and including car-like vehicles doesn't seem too far off, though the challenges are numerous and daunting. Flying cars will likely not include the same amount of training and preparation as private planes. The gamble seems to be software can help take on much of the burden, only time will tell if that's going to pan out. 1. What about those who could never fathom a globally connected network of information? Or the precedence of touch-based interfaces? Or the reliable, safe electric car?
• simonebrunozzi 7y ago
  I don't agree with your sentiment. There are many possible ways to make this work in a useful way. Let me try with just the first example that comes to mind. I live in the Bay area and I'll use it as the environment. Imagine a dozen or so "carports" for these flying cars, conveniently located close to where people need to commute to/from. Trace routes between these, and setup scheduled travels between them with a high enough frequency. Now all of a sudden you can commute from Marin county to downtown SF, or from SF to Oakland, in just a few minutes, while at the same time removing cars from the existing road infrastructure. Yes, there's the problem of noise. Cities are already very noisy, what if you limit these flying cars to a time window where it doesn't annoy people too much, e.g. 8am to 7pm. Still on noise: what if you devise a way to limit the noise when close to the actual carport, e.g. with sound barriers that mitigate the noise for the first 50-60 feet of take-off or landing. What if the first 300 feet of take-off and landing are assisted with a different vehicle, built on purpose to make less noise than a flying car? Or, what if noise is too bad, and you limit this to placing carports in areas where you won't disturb neighbors too much, and where the path between two carports is over the ocean, e.g. Santa Cruz to San Francisco, or Miur Beach to Ocean Beach. On the driver: I wouldn't want a human being to be in control. These routes should be taken by completely automated vehicles. It's easier to accomplish than a level-5 autonomous car, because you don't have obstacles - especially if these route corridors become a no-fly zone for other things like drones, etc. Here you are, it's a poorly designed plan, but it's a start. And I'm sure that by iterating more and more the plan can become acceptable, then viable, then a good idea.
• tabtab 7y ago
  Re: Most people are lucky to drive a year without a costly mistake. Put them in the air, and their mistake (or a self-driving mistake) means death. I would expect bots to control masses of flying cars in populated areas, not human drivers. The air is actually simpler to navigate because there's not much around besides other flying vehicles. You don't have pedestrians, potholes, fallen trees, fading lane paint, etc. (Maybe flying sharks during a sharknado, but those are relatively rare.)