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Comment by geetee | Hacker News Reader

The autopilot discussion at the end was more interesting than the Apple part. Side note: Betty Liu looks stoned.

I have a problem with his assertion that Tesla will be the first company to market with a significant "autopilot". You can go out today and buy a car from Honda that will autonomously turn the steering wheel to stay within lanes and adjust the throttle/brake to maintain speeds in traffic. If I read the (marketing) details correctly, it sounds to me like you could turn the system on in LA and not touch the wheel/brake/throttle until you have to exit I-5 or run out of gas. If that's not a significant advance in autopilot technology, I wonder what Musk is cooking.

> If that's not a significant advance in autopilot technology, I wonder what Musk is cooking.

He's probably willing to fork over licensing fees immediately for Google X's Level 3 [The driver can fully cede control of all safety-critical functions in certain conditions. The car senses when conditions require the driver to retake control and provides a "sufficiently comfortable transition time" for the driver to do so.] automation technology.

I agree. I've been confused by this notion of driver-less cars up until now because at the end of the day it didn't seem workable or acceptable to have cars on the road with no human attendant. Musk clears that up when he says he doesn't like the term driver-less and it's much more like auto-pilot on an airplane that will assist drivers. He predicts it will be a common accessory in high end cars in 3 years and in all cars in 10 years. One scenario where this would be very helpful would be in the dense fog which occurs in the California Central Valley.

Driver assist is a common feature in currently available high end cars and is working down through the model tiers.

(Lane keeping, adaptive cruise, accident avoidance (brake pressure priming/auto braking), in some sense traction control is a driver assist feature)

I shouldn't have said "assist drivers" because I took it to mean full auto-pilot like an airplane. The car could drive itself from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible without human intervention, while the licensed human driver remained ultimately responsible for safe operation. I wonder if activities like texting or reading a book while piloting a car will become legal in this case.

Yeah, fair enough. I think that is the worst case situation, because people won't pay enough attention (so to allow it the pilot has to be good enough to anyway work/license/stand up to liability alone).

That isn't really what aircraft autopilots do (intend to do a full point A to point B without human intervention). Texting and reading won't become legal if the driver is still responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle.

A few minutes research shows mine is a common misconception in modern commercial flight [1] and "Autopilots exist that automate all of these flight phases except taxi and takeoff" [2].

I think this speaks further to the difficulties with driver-less cars. I was taught not to swerve when an animal ran out in front of the car, even if it meant hitting the animal, because the car might roll. If a driver-less car makes this calculation, there will be ramifications. Should a driver-less car destroy itself rather than hitting an animal?

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/24/travel/autopilot-airlines/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot

The driverless vehicle can probably calculate a lateral acceleration for the vehicle that won't roll it over but still avoid the animal, then monitor the application of turn input to further ensure the vehicle doesn't roll over.

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