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Large aircraft are basically self-driving these days. Pilots can choose to do almost nothing at all from takoff to landing. However, the failure modes are all m
by bane 7y ago
Large aircraft are basically self-driving these days. Pilots can choose to do almost nothing at all from takoff to landing. However, the failure modes are all mostly catastrophic so pilots remain under the assumption that they can slightly increase the survivability rate when the automation fails. Modern drone systems are also have elements of this kind of automation and can fly complex flight paths and station keep and land and so on more or less on their own.
Some large boat systems have are also similarly "self-driving" and can navigate to way points and along various lanes without too much intervention. They need pilots and tugs for the small-nav stuff like canals and ports and so on, there's simply too many permutations of "things that can be hit and sunk" to rely on the automation. Smaller boats can also buy commercial "autonav" systems that link the engine, steering and such to GPS. However, the marine environment is hellish on equipment.
Trucking is being seriously looked at, with active test runs, but like big ships needs local pilots for the end-points and local nav. Again too many things in flux and too many things to hit.
Cars exist basically continuously at the terminal ends of the trucking problem and are trying to solve the local pilot problem. Humans, with our highly adaptive sensory-response systems can do it to various levels of skill, but even we have lots and lots of failure modes even without impairment.
- i_am_proteus 7y agoOne advantage of ocean-going ships for automation is that they can (and do) embark pilots for operation waters. On the flipside, the machinery isn't designed to operate for weeks on end without any engineering crew.
- boxy310 7y agoLong-haul trucking would be a great use-case. Even if you need humans for local pilot guidance, you can queue them up to a "cell phone lot" and courier the last-mile drivers in between shifts of going back & forth. It would also mean drivers would be based more locally to points of loading, rather than having to be constantly on the road away from home.
- magduf 7y ago>It would also mean drivers would be based more locally to points of loading, rather than having to be constantly on the road away from home. Which would probably make it much easier to hire drivers, too. Lately, long-haul trucking has had a hard time recruiting people into the profession, because the pay isn't that great and the lifestyle completely destroys any relationship you have. Local trucking doesn't have this problem: a driver can drive for the day and be home for dinner.
- virmundi 7y agoLong-haul is more than just driving. Will smart trucks be able to put chains on and pull them off when necessary? Handle unloading of items of weighing process proves problematic? Call for pick up of items removed during weighing? Handle snow? Handle loss of sensors? Handle run away down hill on a steep incline. None of these are insurmountable, but all are well out of the current horizon. Heck, just refueling is hard.
- rtkwe 7y agoMost of those can be solved by changes to the truck or delivering spot local drivers. For weighing the trucks could run different trailers with load cells to weigh itself to ensure they're under the weight limit for their route. For snow there are automatic chain systems used on buses today those might be adaptable. Run away ramps are usually marked so a combination of good mapping data for route planning and finding run offs and vision/driving they'll have anyways.
- cjrp 7y ago> Large aircraft are basically self-driving these days. Pilots can choose to do almost nothing at all from takoff to landing. Sort of. The plane will continue to fly the pre-programmed route without pilot involvement, so the actual manipulation of the control surfaces is no longer their primary task. But there are systems to monitor, controllers to talk to, weather systems to navigate around, climbs/descents to find more favourable winds, fuel imbalances to correct, etc. And of course, baseball scores to pick up from ADF. I'd liken it to how (most) software engineers are not writing in Assembly. Instead they're using higher-level languages and libraries to solve problems. Similarly a pilot is not hands-on flying for 7 hours over the Atlantic, but they're still operating the aircraft.
- rtkwe 7y agoThey could automate pretty much all of those away but even if they did I don't think flying is a good comparison for self-driving. Flying is pretty much the ideal environment for computer control because there are only a few actual obstacles to deal with; weather, terrain, and other planes and all of those can be handled with outside signals.