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Comment by lujim | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to let the term "Passenger drone" slide, but I will feel a hint of aggravation when CNN reports on "Manned UAVs"

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> but I will feel a hint of aggravation when CNN reports on "Manned UAVs"

Well, yeah, "manned UAVs" would just be wrong -- drone passengers are passengers, not crew, and "manned" refers to having a human crew.

(Though I suppose a long-endurance drone with human maintenance crew might be properly considered "manned" despite being unpiloted. But, then, an Unpiloted Aerial Vehicle could have the same natural initialism as an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle...)

Also, the "U" stands for Unmanned. "Manned UAVs" is like the opposite of RAS Syndrome

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAS_syndrome

Just pretend the U stands for unpiloted.

The one in the article is actually piloted. It's just not that hard to fly. Once it's completely automated CNN will run a story about "Unmanned MUAV's"

What's the aversions? A drone is a plane that is remote controlled or flies itself... a passenger drone or a manned uav would be a remote/self controlled airplane that has cargo: people.

Not that people won't butcher the terminology (ATM Machine), but even at the worse, these shouldn't be to bad...

(U)nmanned (A)erial (V)ehicle = UAV. A manned UAV would be a bit of an oxymoron.

Passengers != manned. They aren't operating the vehicle, they're cargo.

even if that is the definition of manned it still doesn't make sense. because the "U" in UAV stands for Unmanned not Unpiloted. However "Manned space flight" would still apply even if the astronaut was just ballast right?

A trip to mars would be completely automated but you still wouldn't call it unmanned if a scientist was on board that did nothing but scientist stuff.

Which is exactly why 'manned UAV' makes no sense.

Yes but UAVs are built to an overall lower standard of reliability and safety precisely because there are no people on board.

UAV = Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

"Manned Unmanned Aerial Vehicle" = nonsense

How about autonomous multi-rotor? There's no assumption regarding the payload then.

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