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Comment by dreamcompiler | Hacker News Reader

An auto-pilot for an airplane is a considerably easier problem to solve. No lanes; no pedestrians; very little other traffic; three spatial degrees of freedom. That's why auto-pilots for airplanes have existed for almost a century but we're just now beginning to get self-driving cars. Humans are still better at dealing with the full panoply of crap that road driving throws at us.

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Aircraft autopilots also rely on experienced and licensed pilots to operate them and be responsible for the aircraft at all times. Self driving cars have assume the operator is not particularly capable nor paying attention to anything happening on the road.

Do they rely on the pilot? I was under the impression it was entirely hands off.

There are many conditions unders which an aircraft autopilot will simply disconnect without previous warning and hand over controls to the pilot.

Current generation of autopilots doesn't handle traffic avoidance or make any routing decisions - they just follow pre-programmed routes at pre-programmed speed and altitude (or climb/descent profile).

But even this relatively simple level of automation causes problems - pilots start to rely on automation too much, and when things go south they are not capable to deal with it.

Airlines recognize it, and put more emphasis on hand-flying during training and routine operations, so pilots don't lose their basic piloting skills.

It's not a new problem - there is an excellent training video from 1997 - "Children of the Magenta": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10

This video also inspired an excellent podcast from 99 Percent Invisible about the challenges and dangers of automation. I would highly recommend listening.

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magent...

Google Self-Driving Cars currently fail approximately every 1,500 miles, according to their own report. We are a LONG way away from being able to separate the operator's attention from driving.

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