3 ms·

You wouldn't want to be the one who crashes this

wongarsu 6y ago
The communication delay between earth and mars in 9 minutes at the lowest, 42 minutes when the planets are far apart. If something is crashing the helicopter then it's a software bug.
- LeifCarrotson 6y ago
  As someone who writes software, the fact that it must be a bug is scant consolation when it crashes. It just means that you have no hope to prevent it by reflex, you had to fix it by thinking intentionally and carefully a long time ago when you wrote the software.
  - thelean12 6y ago
    As someone who has written robot software, it's not as bad as you might think. You do a LOT of testing before hand, and you do system checks before committing to something. I was always more worried about sensor failures that my software doesn't pick up on. Then again none of my robots ever cost $80 million dollars and has landed on Mars...
    - LeifCarrotson 6y ago
      I have written robot software...curious what context you were in. I've been doing industrial automation with commercial robot arms, where testing is mostly functional and there's very few system checks. You're basically jogging the robot with the teach pendant, recording points, and reading digital IO. There are minimal system checks, simulation is mostly to make sure the cell CAD layout is reachable and less to verify that things are working correctly. Version control is completely offline, there's not even an "undo" feature to revert a touched up point unless you underwent a tedious and slow backup procedure. That said, like you, none of my robots cost more than 6 figures, and they're all permanently anchored to terrestrial steel and concrete...
- imtringued 5y ago
  I wouldn't want to be the one (software developer) who (wrote the buggy software that) crashes this.
jpindar 6y ago
It's not like someone is controlling it live, I'm sure there are multiple people reviewing the commands.
unnouinceput 6y ago
In the last flight when they'll try to reach over 2k feet they expect the heli to crash. So the one operating (well, not in real time as already pointed) it at that time wants, or better phrasing is expects, to crash it.

The communication delay between earth and mars in 9 minutes at the lowest, 42 minutes when the planets are far apart. If something is crashing the helicopter then it's a software bug.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago
As someone who writes software, the fact that it must be a bug is scant consolation when it crashes. It just means that you have no hope to prevent it by reflex, you had to fix it by thinking intentionally and carefully a long time ago when you wrote the software.
- thelean12 6y ago
  As someone who has written robot software, it's not as bad as you might think. You do a LOT of testing before hand, and you do system checks before committing to something. I was always more worried about sensor failures that my software doesn't pick up on. Then again none of my robots ever cost $80 million dollars and has landed on Mars...
  - LeifCarrotson 6y ago
    I have written robot software...curious what context you were in. I've been doing industrial automation with commercial robot arms, where testing is mostly functional and there's very few system checks. You're basically jogging the robot with the teach pendant, recording points, and reading digital IO. There are minimal system checks, simulation is mostly to make sure the cell CAD layout is reachable and less to verify that things are working correctly. Version control is completely offline, there's not even an "undo" feature to revert a touched up point unless you underwent a tedious and slow backup procedure. That said, like you, none of my robots cost more than 6 figures, and they're all permanently anchored to terrestrial steel and concrete...
imtringued 5y ago
I wouldn't want to be the one (software developer) who (wrote the buggy software that) crashes this.

jpindar 6y ago

It's not like someone is controlling it live, I'm sure there are multiple people reviewing the commands.

unnouinceput 6y ago

In the last flight when they'll try to reach over 2k feet they expect the heli to crash. So the one operating (well, not in real time as already pointed) it at that time wants, or better phrasing is expects, to crash it.