Comment by cynix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cynix | Hacker News Reader

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> Tesla's "autopilot" is just automatic lane keeping and automatic cruise control.

And lane changing. But yes, they never claimed the current system could do any more than that.

> Mercedes and BMW have been shipping that for years.

Yet, their systems on their 2017 models still isn't as good as Tesla's current system. [1]

> The other car companies have hardware to check if the driver's hands are on the wheel. Tesla not only didn't do that…

Tesla's system will indeed periodically prompt you to hold the steering wheel, and will disengage if the driver does not react to several warnings.

> … they hyped those basic functions as being an "autopilot", as if they had something comparable to what Google has

No. What Google has is called autonomous driving. You've completely misunderstood the meaning of the word "autopilot". From Wikipedia:

> An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace a human operator, but assist them in controlling the vehicle, allowing them to focus on broader aspects of operation, such as monitoring the trajectory, weather and systems.

And that's exactly what Tesla's Autopilot does: assist the driver in controlling the vehicle, but does not replace a human operator.

[1] http://mashable.com/2016/06/16/2017-mercedes-benz-e-class-fi...

"Autopilot" is understood to mean "the plane flies itself" by the general public. Here's one human pilot who's ticked off by it:

http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/

> "Autopilot" is understood to mean "the plane flies itself" by the general public.

Just because people mistakenly believe something doesn't make it right. The general public once thought the Earth was flat, and how did that turn out?

Unlike the shape of the Earth, there is no truth of the matter regarding what a word means except common usage. In certain cases a word might have a technical definition beyond the usual consensus but 'autopilot' isn't one of those words and communications to the public in, say, an advertisement have to use the common meaning of words.

>Just because people mistakenly believe something doesn't make it right.

Tesla promotes it as autopilot. Words matter.

If Tesla itself selectively denies that the common understanding is the meaning they intend, then they appear to be trying to have it both ways: cashing in on the PR and cachet that the common meaning confers, while disclaiming the responsibility that goes along with owners actually believing it.

You're right, Tesla mistakenly believed they could cash in on calling their system Autopilot™ and somehow sidestep the connotations with the name and the damage pushing a broken implementation on consumers is causing.

The unfortunate truth is, if I gave my mom a car with the autopilot feature, she'd end up eventually trusting it and not care about the implementation details that make Tesla's system not an automated driving feature. That's scary and dangerous to market to consumers.

On a sailboat "autopilot" generally means "keep this heading" or "keep this point of sail." I'm pretty sure in aviation it means "take me to this way point and elevation" or a sequence of such maneuvers. A plane flies itself or a boat navigates itself only so long as nothing unexpected occurs. In either case, a pilot must be standing by, maintaining awareness, ready to assume control and handle anything that may come up. I'm not sure what people think this means in terms of driving a car but I think it's early enough that Tesla can help define what this means.

Autopilot systems in aviation have become so complex and diverse that there is no single catch-all sentence to describe them. I guess you could come close with the phrase "a system designed to keep and guide the state of the aircraft within and through certain set constrains".

Those constrains could be constant like a certain heading or a direction (not the same thing by the way), a series of vectors or a single vector (like a flight-path or an approach to a runway) or constraints that depend on dynamic variables like controlling the altitude and speed according to the weight of the aircraft or automatically avoiding traffic.

Of course the pilot must be standing by because a) autopilots do not keep track of everything (and aviation control interfaces are quite complex) and b) sensors can and do malfunction.

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