Re: Self Preservation mode
"...I've said it before and I'll say it again. Its a glorified cruise control. Calling it "Autopilot" vastly overstates its abilities and lulls drivers into a false sense of security..."
I've hadn't really noticed that people had such a messed up definition of autopilot until the last few days when this crash's report came out.
This is Autopilot. Not a chauffeur, or a self-driving car. On and airplane, Autopilot holds a heading and an altitude. It does not steer around other planes or terrain. On a boat, autopilot will hold a magnetic/true-heading course, it will not avoid other boats or undersea obstructions and the shore. Sure other systems have been piped into those autopilots to do more advanced stuff - reaching waypoints can trigger the loading of the next waypoint with a new heading - and radars, GPS, TCAS, and transponders add to the overall information picture, but a person still needs to respond when all the alarms start going off.
If you set a heading on a boat and then go below deck to get a cup of coffee for 10 minutes, the autopilot will drive itself right into another boat and not think anything was wrong with that. We don't have <u>self driving</u> commercial boats and planes yet either... The US Navy had a few crashes in recent history that show what happens on a boat when you don't pay attention to what your automation systems are doing.
It seems that only in the delusions of people who are literally >>>dying<<< to get a self driving car, that the definition seems to have been misunderstood.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
