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Comment by s_m_t | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the autopilot in a tesla pretty similar to what is called autopilot in an airplane?

Aeroplanes have ATC keeping multiple miles of separation, and thousands of feet of height between vehicles, and regulations requiring a pair of awake, sober and aware humans on board.

An aircraft autopilot can be quite dumb and remain safe.

The grandparent comment is still correct though.

1. it's not practically correct, the experience of using a plane autopilot and tesla's driving assistance is completely different, a plane autopilot will not smash you into a parked truck or a road divider — because they don't exist in the sky, sure, but at the end of the day the important bit is a plane's autopilot is almost certainly going to warn and disengage long before it kills you

2. it's not communicationally correct, most drivers are not pilot, and when you talk about "autopilot" to a layperson they expect an automated driving system (SAE3 or more), and this false impression is exactly why Tesla's marketing named their driving assistance the way they did

3. and it's not really technically correct either, there are autopilots which can do everything between takeoff and taxiing (including landing), tesla's driving assistance can do no such thing

An aircraft's autopilot does not absolve the pilot of keeping an eye on the instruments, the flight situation, the windows (if applicable). He has to be ready at any moment to disengage the autopilot or take the controls when the autopilot self-disengages.

The only thing an autopilot, both the tesla's and the airplane's, is good for is reducing the cognitive load of the operator.

Fully agree, but that is not how it is positioned by Tesla, which I think creates most of the problem.

> but that is not how it is positioned by Tesla

I disagree, based on my Model S orientation from my delivery specialist, as well as the very clear warnings on the MCU display regarding the driver needing to maintain control at all times (which is also presented on the dashboard display above the steering wheel each and every time autosteer is enabled). It’s made abundantly clear what the limitations are.

Stupid people will do stupid things. Safeguards have diminishing returns, and does not absolve an operator of personal responsibility.

We already have a term for that. It is called lane assistance/guidance.

To even bring up aircrafts (or boats or whatever) is incredible disingenuous and not comparable in any practical sense what so ever.

Lane assistance doesn't necessarily regulate speed, as far as I know. I don't think that Teslas marketing is misleading. They are even actively trying to disabuse their customers of the notion that this autopilot is more capable than it is.

Plane autopilot doesn't have to deal with obsticles. It has to fly in a straight line with very gradual adjustments. Driving is magnitudes more complex, contextual data, inconsistent behaviors of other drivers, etc.

On the other hand, if you set an airplane autopilot against a mountain, it will happily go there and crash. And try to make an airplane in autopilot land safely in the same way they did with this car.

Airborne collision avoidance system are part of both civil and military aviation. If nothing else Aircraft do need to deal with mountains.

Military aircraft go a step further and avoid hills. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrain-following_radar

This is even less complicated than an adaptive cruise control system. If you point it to in the general direction of a mountain, it very much depends on luck if the descent is possible or not.

Terrain-following is significantly more complex than the most basic forms of adaptive cruse control. Radar works much better for tracking discrete objects moving at different speeds than mapping 3d terrain. This is why adaptive cruse control will often hit stationary objects and generally disengage at low speeds.

Remember, the aircraft needs to avoid everything in a line in front of it. But, they also want to stay as low as possible to avoid enemy radar, so it also wants steer steer around hills and even trees vs simply going up.

that is a possibility, but there are key differences that come to mind. one is the different environments. two, the commercial airline pilots are working when using auto-pilot. they are flying the airplane via automation and are still very active in working with the plane and computer systems. they are still performing their jobs. of course, there are still issues, for example the recent boeing plane crash. but to me, it isn't comparable to the tesla situation, especially given the apparent idiocy of tesla owners who have completely bought into the hype compared to professional pilots who actually remain active in flying the plane.

But in terms of the appropriateness of calling the feature “autopilot,” it seems that Tesla’s feature is as deserving of the name as an airplane’s autopilot (the driver/pilot still has to remain alert and focused on what’s happening).

So what you’re implying is that Tesla uses the misguided notion that many people have about the capabilities of an airplane autopilot to promote a feature that doesn’t behave as people expect?

after experiencing this line of inquiry on many forums, yes, that is consensus.

autopilot is the lane guidance of the skies that maintains basic stability not a level 5 system. people hear autopilot and think it means it does "everything."

further muddying the waters, tesla maintains their car has all the hardware, sensors and computation to support fully autonomous driving. it's just that pesky software missing.

> autopilot is the lane guidance of the skies that maintains basic stability not a level 5 system.

FWIW that's not necessarily true either, autopilots run the entire gamut from "maintains trajectory and altitude" to "automated flight from takeoff to landing" (only the taxiing is left to the pilot).

A switch for maintaining bearing and altitude would be pretty useless in a car, but it would definitely cause fewer misunderstandings than the current illusion of autonomy. Supervised autonomy is dangerous no matter how it is labeled, but some labels are worse than others.

that's all well and good, but i am not talking about airplanes' auto-pilot. there are also still differences in terms of everyday joes buying teslas using its auto-pilot versus trained pilots using auto-pilot. there are differences in availability so the airplane situation is not as suscpetible or vulnerable to a poorly named feature and marketing hype. maybe it is, but i wager the tesla situation is worse.

What recent Boeing crash? I cannot think of anything recent involving the autopilot.

Lion Air flight on the new 737 Max I presume. It isn't exactly the autopilot at cause though according to initial reports, it's the anti-stall system pitching down due to a broken stall sensor, and the pilots not knowing how to disengage it.

Autopilot is the system that moves the flight surfaces to maintain altitude (or a climb/dive rate), and heading. There is an FMS (Flight Management System) that can give commands to the autopilot. The FMS knows the X,Y,Z of every waypoint and every runway touchdown point, and has in it encoded the 'highway rules' of aviation. When the FMS flies the plane, it is going on a pre-planned route. It does not adapt to anything. Imminent collision with another aircraft (TCAS advisories) alert the pilot to do something, not the FMS/Autopilot. It is a long way from self driving a car. The specifics make it a good analogy, but how much of the public understands it to this depth.

pretty sure autopilot in airplanes just monitors rudimentary sensors and follows a gps course.

i dont think most airplanes even have active radar, let alone cameras/lidar and randomly moving obstacle avoidance at milisecond latency, road sign recognition, etc.

comparatively boring at 35k ft. many orders of magnitude complexity difference.

Doesn’t a pilot receive thousands of hours of training to correctly operate and monitor the auto-pilot though ?

Isn’t that because planes are a lot harder to operate than automobiles (or at least our tolerance for accidents is much lower with planes)? The required training to operate Tesla’s autopilot is nothing more than a normal car driver plus following the very simple and constant instructions the car gives (basically just to keep your hands on the wheel, which the car supposedly enforces).

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