4 ms·

Is it feasible to run large ships on autopilot? Large airliners land mostly on autopilot now, right? Seems like a somewhat solvable problem to combine a bunch

Is it feasible to run large ships on autopilot? Large airliners land mostly on autopilot now, right? Seems like a somewhat solvable problem to combine a bunch of sensor inputs to keep the ship inside of a safe corridor, such that even a loss of power would be accounted for to ensure it would drift safely. Is it a much harder problem than my intuition assumes? Cost issue?

acdha 3y ago
The early reports suggest that the ship was having trouble actively maintaining position - some have theorized a stuck rudder or wind pressure – in which case the only thing an autopilot could do is make the situation worse. I’d wait for the full investigation to come out before speculating about fixes.
- berniedurfee 3y ago
  Not a fix per se, but a safer system going forward. Given all the variables, is it feasible to build a system that continuously runs through multiple failure modes, predicts where the ship would end up and then guide the ship on a course where even a loss of power would have the ship drift between the supports. Was there a configuration of the ship that would have prevented it from hitting the bridge even after the power loss. This seems like something that could be continuously calculated in realtime to keep a ship in a safe corridor, such that it wouldn’t strike the bridge even if the engines failed, based on winds, currents, size, load, etc. I’m speculating about fixes, because it seems prudent to think about how to prevent the next strike before it happens. I feel like technology could reduce that risk to some degree.
  - calfuris 3y ago
    I think that in general, a course that (a) gets the ship from where it started to where it needs to go and (b) stays within navigation channels and (c) minimizes the amount of time spent in configurations where a loss of control would result in a collision will spend a nonzero amount of time in such configurations.
  - acdha 3y ago
    > guide the ship on a course where even a loss of power would have the ship drift between the supports. If one of the failure modes is a stuck rudder, how’s that supposed to work in a narrow space where it could be drifting in either direction?

acdha 3y ago

The early reports suggest that the ship was having trouble actively maintaining position - some have theorized a stuck rudder or wind pressure – in which case the only thing an autopilot could do is make the situation worse. I’d wait for the full investigation to come out before speculating about fixes.

berniedurfee 3y ago
Not a fix per se, but a safer system going forward. Given all the variables, is it feasible to build a system that continuously runs through multiple failure modes, predicts where the ship would end up and then guide the ship on a course where even a loss of power would have the ship drift between the supports. Was there a configuration of the ship that would have prevented it from hitting the bridge even after the power loss. This seems like something that could be continuously calculated in realtime to keep a ship in a safe corridor, such that it wouldn’t strike the bridge even if the engines failed, based on winds, currents, size, load, etc. I’m speculating about fixes, because it seems prudent to think about how to prevent the next strike before it happens. I feel like technology could reduce that risk to some degree.
- calfuris 3y ago
  I think that in general, a course that (a) gets the ship from where it started to where it needs to go and (b) stays within navigation channels and (c) minimizes the amount of time spent in configurations where a loss of control would result in a collision will spend a nonzero amount of time in such configurations.
- acdha 3y ago
  > guide the ship on a course where even a loss of power would have the ship drift between the supports. If one of the failure modes is a stuck rudder, how’s that supposed to work in a narrow space where it could be drifting in either direction?