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They’re not “no human in the loop” driverless. They’re just on autopilot, same as any airliner. We don’t call planes that takeoff and land themselves “pilotless

They’re not “no human in the loop” driverless. They’re just on autopilot, same as any airliner. We don’t call planes that takeoff and land themselves “pilotless”, because there’s humans in the loop. Waymo must be rather defensive about being called out for merely having autopilot cars, which is weird because that’s rather miraculous in historical terms — but certainly the generic term “autopilot” is a much less distinctive claim to success than “driverless”.

estearum 9mo ago
They are actually "no human in the loop" driverless most of the time. If an airplane did not have a human inside the airplane and they only "dialed in" for extraordinary events, then yes I do think we'd call them pilotless. Anyway Waymo, to my knowledge, doesn't use the terms "driverless" nor "autopilot." They claim that they are creating an artificial driver or that their cars are autonomous. There's something driving the car, it's just not a human driver, ergo it's not "driverless."
AlotOfReading 9mo ago
Autopilot in planes is much closer to cruise control than it is to a Waymo. This is of course the purported rationale behind Tesla's use of the name for their L2 feature. Both require a human operator available and monitoring at all times. The aeronautic equivalent of Waymo is a fully autonomous UAV. A human might be needed to set high-level goals, but all of the actual flying/driving is done by the machine.
nearbuy 9mo ago
Autopilot in planes does not handle takeoff. Pilots still do that. Traditional autopilot was mostly just to keep the plane flying straight. Capabilities have improved over time, but it still doesn't fly the plane the way Waymo drives itself.
- empressplay 9mo ago
  787s can both takeoff and land on autopilot. They can't handle taxiing to and from the gate, however.
- e44858 9mo ago
  Some planes can land automatically without the pilot's input: https://avbrief.com/autoland-saves-king-air-everyone-reported-safe/ https://avbrief.com/autoland-saves-king-air-everyone-reporte... Takeoff is probably easier to automate than an emergency landing.
  - altairprime 9mo ago
    Notably, I believe the Cessna stall parachute in certain planes is autonomous by most definitions, not the least of which because it fires without pilot input and because it takes control of the plane away from the human to do so. I recognize this is a rather, uh, odd use of ‘autonomous’ — but it does technically serve as a pilotless emergency landing mechanism :)
- altairprime 9mo ago
  I like the use of “autonomous” to describe the intended outcome of “pilotless” here: https://newatlas.com/aircraft/airbus-attol-autonomous-airliner/ https://newatlas.com/aircraft/airbus-attol-autonomous-airlin... (2020)
shadowgovt 9mo ago
Pilots in a plane on autopilot are never out of the control authority of the plane (by which I mean: "ready to take over at a moment's notice"). Driverless AVs do drive without perpetual eyes-on oversight. The FAA would never allow that for commercial planes.

estearum 9mo ago

They are actually "no human in the loop" driverless most of the time. If an airplane did not have a human inside the airplane and they only "dialed in" for extraordinary events, then yes I do think we'd call them pilotless. Anyway Waymo, to my knowledge, doesn't use the terms "driverless" nor "autopilot." They claim that they are creating an artificial driver or that their cars are autonomous. There's something driving the car, it's just not a human driver, ergo it's not "driverless."

AlotOfReading 9mo ago

Autopilot in planes is much closer to cruise control than it is to a Waymo. This is of course the purported rationale behind Tesla's use of the name for their L2 feature. Both require a human operator available and monitoring at all times. The aeronautic equivalent of Waymo is a fully autonomous UAV. A human might be needed to set high-level goals, but all of the actual flying/driving is done by the machine.

nearbuy 9mo ago

Autopilot in planes does not handle takeoff. Pilots still do that. Traditional autopilot was mostly just to keep the plane flying straight. Capabilities have improved over time, but it still doesn't fly the plane the way Waymo drives itself.

empressplay 9mo ago
787s can both takeoff and land on autopilot. They can't handle taxiing to and from the gate, however.
e44858 9mo ago
Some planes can land automatically without the pilot's input: https://avbrief.com/autoland-saves-king-air-everyone-reported-safe/ https://avbrief.com/autoland-saves-king-air-everyone-reporte... Takeoff is probably easier to automate than an emergency landing.
- altairprime 9mo ago
  Notably, I believe the Cessna stall parachute in certain planes is autonomous by most definitions, not the least of which because it fires without pilot input and because it takes control of the plane away from the human to do so. I recognize this is a rather, uh, odd use of ‘autonomous’ — but it does technically serve as a pilotless emergency landing mechanism :)
altairprime 9mo ago
I like the use of “autonomous” to describe the intended outcome of “pilotless” here: https://newatlas.com/aircraft/airbus-attol-autonomous-airliner/ https://newatlas.com/aircraft/airbus-attol-autonomous-airlin... (2020)

shadowgovt 9mo ago

Pilots in a plane on autopilot are never out of the control authority of the plane (by which I mean: "ready to take over at a moment's notice"). Driverless AVs do drive without perpetual eyes-on oversight. The FAA would never allow that for commercial planes.