When Do We Get Robot Cars? Because Driving Really Sucks
thetechblock.com
thetechblock.com
You would shred your tires unless they shared control somehow.
I would assume "not like a tank". A steering wheel is 1 dimensional. Conceptually braking and acceleration can be mapped to a one-dimensional continuum, so you've got two axes that map well to a joystick. With nonlinear response, you could probably replace all three of those controls with one stick.
We can't use two joysticks like a tank because it would sheer the rubber from your tires, and maintaining independent throttle control for two sides of a car is silly and unneeded.
That and it seems confusing and unsafe to have both direction and throttle controls on one device, especially when that device is as sensitive as a joystick. When you slam on brakes in a car, the force pushes your body further into the breaking system. If you were to slam on the brakes with a joystick, the force would push you (and the joystick) forward, disengaging the brakes and applying throttle. Very hard to control.
To me, the pedals seem like a good compromise between fine tuned adjustment and rapid, emergency control.
The wheel is kind of annoying but I can't think of anything that would work better. A joystick would be too finicky in its controls. Something like a rudder might work, since you are really only ever steering a car different degrees of "forward"
(1) A car can move in 360 degrees too (if you can rotate a full circle in a plane...)
(2) All it takes to make full use of a joystick is to have controls with two relevant dimensions (which cars have).
(3) A helicopter typically needs a lot more than a joystick, since it usually has about 4-5 relevant dimensions of control (2D cyclic, 1D collective, 1D yaw, 1D throttle, but the last may be managed automatically in normal operation).
> We can't use two joysticks like a tank because it would sheer the rubber from your tires
You could, with the right control regime (e.g., double forward is drive, double back is reverse, but any other combination is based on relative position), but you probably wouldn't want to. Of course, you know what else often doesn't use "two joysticks like a tank" -- actual tanks. Because two joysticks is overkill for two degrees of freedom .
> That and it seems confusing and unsafe to have both direction and throttle controls on one device, especially when that device is as sensitive as a joystick.
"As sensitive as a joystick" isn't meaningful. Degree of sensitivity on a joystick can be as little or as much as you want.
> When you slam on brakes in a car, the force pushes your body further into the breaking system. If you were to slam on the brakes with a joystick, the force would push you (and the joystick) forward, disengaging the brakes and applying throttle.
My first instinct with a joystick based system with a car would be to have brake being forward, not back. (Forward push brakes are a common control element in hand controls for autos, e.g., those that are made for the handicapped.)