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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

The naming of Autopilot is unfortunate, because it is not one... but that name may give drivers an inclination to trust it more than they should.

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They should have called it "Cruise Control Plus™" or something similar. Regardless of the usual arguments about how accurate the name is according to the avionics definition of the term, "autopilot" is misleading in the context of the consumer car market. Tesla should not have named it that.

> autopilot: a device that steers a ship, aircraft, or spacecraft in place of a person.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autopilot

I am surprised that Merriam Webster's definition only mentions steering and not acceleration. Telsa's autopilot does have a steering component, so it doesn't seem to be that much of a stretch.

I think the argument against the term 'autopilot' is less about the technical accuracy, and more about the implication and assumptions of the layman. To most people, 'autopilot' suggest that they can be totally hands-off, which isn't true yet.

Yeah, I feel like the people here/elsewhere who take great pains to point out the limitations of aircraft autopilot systems somewhat miss the point - the general perception of what is offered.

The average lay person doesn't care about different axes of autopilot, Flight Management Systems (FMS), Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) versus GPS, autloand capabilities and categories of Instrument Land Systems (ILS). (Yes, I grouped several different, complementary technologies together, whilst aware of their definitions, to further my point).

Lay understanding of autopilot being 'tell it a destination, let it do the work'.

Am I missing something with this argument? It's consistently made on these anti-Tesla threads here and on Reddit, but from my understanding an aircraft's autopilot is actually dumber than Tesla's. You set bearing, altitude, and speed and the plane will adjust to and keep that course—that's it. Some will land in optimal conditions, but they're unable to taxi. Also a great deal of plane crashes are due to "handoff" issues.

So it seems to me that Tesla's auto-pilot is aptly named.

> You set bearing, altitude, and speed and the plane will adjust to and keep that course—that's it.

And that's a very useful and safe way to get a plane from A to B, given the amount of route planning and air traffic control in modern aviation. An autopilot can generally provide ample warning of situations it can't handle, and a plane at cruise altitude has quite a bit of room for recoverable error.

Until we have traffic control on our highways that makes sure our cars know about obstacles early enough, the same basic features are not enough to provide the same experience for a car.

The problem with the naming has nothing to do with the technical capabilities, but an understanding of how that will impact human-machine interaction. You are absolutely right that aircraft autopilot is a lot "dumber" in a sense. But there is no ambiguity in the fact that when the pilot turns on the autopilot, he can -- and does expect -- the computer to take over all flight operations.

By naming the system autopilot, Tesla has also created that same expectation with their customers. Not only that, but it has at best turned a blind eye to reports and videos and stories of customers who willfully take their hands of the wheel/sit in the back seat/etc. and at worst encouraged an erroneous public perception of how the autopilot system should be used.

The issues you cited in handoffs with airplanes are far more complicated when it comes to cars, where decisions need necessarily to be taken in a much shorter period of time. But all of that seems really downplayed by Tesla marketing, which instead chooses to aggressively market just how close the system is to full driving autonomy, instead of more like a gentle aid to monotonous highway driving.

The disconnect between their official documentation and their marketing is immense. That is what is potentially dangerous.

"But there is no ambiguity in the fact that when the pilot turns on the autopilot, he can -- and does expect -- the computer to take over all flight operations."

What do you mean by this? There are many autopilots which won't take over all flight operations. Some only handle a single control axis, or two. More sophisticated ones can indeed handle everything, but that's not the only kind out there.

If people think that's what all autopilots do, then the name is still a problem, but that's a bit different.

An autopilot in newer light GA aircraft, like Bendix/King KAP-140, is able to hold/climb/descend to an altitude, and maintain heading based on the GPS input, so it does handle hands-on flight operations leaving the pilot to maintain awareness and program the GPS.

Looks like the KAP-140 comes in a single-axis version too.

To add to this, aircraft autopilots have one huge advantage over terrestrial based autopilots: the lack of need to manage collision avoidance. This is handled by ATC in most cases, with the pilot only offering minimal backup (in the case of flying through clouds, no backup).

Any vehicular autopilot will need to reliably and consistently take care of collision avoidance. Any autopilot which wants to deem itself better than humans needs to do so much better than the equivalent human (and in a multitude of conditions, such as rain, snow, gravel, idiot drivers...).

And this doesn't even consider handover times. An aircraft autopilot could fail completely, and the pilot would still have on the order of minutes to recover (assuming this occurs mid-flight, at cruising altitude). A car autopilot failure would give seconds, in the best case.

There are many degrees of autopilot. It can be something as simple as a connection between a gyrocompass and the rudder to hold heading, all the way up to a fully automatic takeoff, cruise, and landing system.

The issue supposedly is that people have no idea about this, though, and think (because of movies?) that "autopilot" means it does everything. I'm still not sure if I believe it, but if so it has nothing to do with real autopilots.

When I hear "autopilot" I think of movies where the pilot flicks a switch then gets up and has a coffee while chatting to an air hostess.

Tesla's marketing many people know this is what people think of too, as the general population is never well versed in any area of speciality, by definition.

Calling it autopilot is misleading. Cars aren't aircraft and drivers aren't pilots.

The difference is that the aircraft autopilot system does not have to be that intelligent. My imagination is that if I engage an aircraft autopilot system I'm free to do other stuff for >= 1minute, because it's enough to simply hold the direction and height. There are no sudden events.

In a car however with the current state of automotive assisantance systems the timeframe for "doing other stuff" is less than 1 second because we have a fast varying environment there, including other cars (or pedestrians, bicycles, ...) taking sudden movements. Even many 5s situations can not be handled by todays assistance systems, like some surface conditions, traffic lights, track changes due to constructions, etc. Which in the end means you have to be constantly be in control of car, which is just not what "automatic" suggests.

You're missing the fact that most consumers are likely totally ignorant of this.

And yet, we have Elon Musk saying that half a million people would have been saved by autopilot, if it were rolled out universally. [1] This doesn't sound like he's pitching a 'maintain speed and heading' device.

So, can we rely on it to make the right decision in a safety-critical situation, or not? (The answer to this question seems to be 'yes, until there's an accident.')

[1] https://electrek.co/2016/07/05/elon-musk-tesla-autopilot-sav...

Right, exactly. This is the same with their auto park / summon systems that can't tell whether they're plowing through a half-open garage door.

All shiny and glittery world: "Press a button, walk inside, while car is putting itself away for you!" "Press a button as you walk out the front door and the car will pull up in front of you!" "Half a million lives could be saved by using our ever-so-safe autopilot system!"

Cold reality, faced with liability and lawsuits: "Your fault. You didn't stand there and supervise the whole process!" "Your fault, it's not an autopilot that lets you not be in control of the vehicle, despite allowing you to go up to 15 minutes without touching the steering wheel" "Your fault, you hit the brakes with insufficient time to stop the vehicle before a collision. The vehicle wasn't under autopilot control at the time of the collision, so it doesn't count. The fact that you only hit the brakes because the vehicle was about to happily collide at speed is ... entirely ... separate, and unrelated!"

On top of other comments, don't forget that pilots are highly trained professionals, with a good knowledge of their vehicle and its operation. Very few drivers fall into that category.

Catching a cold is unfortunate.

Naming a much-hyped feature of your multi-billion dollar company's only product - in such a way that causes confusion about its capabilities is not unfortunate. It is deliberate.

Putting aside the semantics of the word "autopilot", haven't Tesla always been clear that the system was in beta and should only be used by a fully attentive driver, with your hands held close to the steering wheel?

This understanding only comes from watching autopilot videos on YouTube. I've never seen the official instructions sent to owners, so I could be wrong.

If this is the case, it seems unfair to blame Tesla for incidents where people have used the autopilot in direct contravention of the instructions, just because we all slightly disagree on what the name means.

Can any Tesla owners comment on what information was sent to them when autopilot was rolled out?

Really? The autopilot on my boat will attempt (badly) to go in a straight line, care nothing about speed, and will happily run me into buoys, boats, beaches, bridges, and boulders. If you are foolish enough to attempt to provide a route with waypoints for turns it will throw the rudder over without warning so suddenly that you may be injured or thrown from the vessel.

It's a big world, I suppose there are people that think "autopilot" means "crawl into the back seat and take a nap", but there is certainly a spectrum, and if you try to name something so it can never be misunderstood you will probably end up calling it "NaviaMODE™®℠" and then no one knows anything.

I don't think the average consumer will think about boat 'autopilot' when he hears the term. For most people autopilots are associated with airplanes, because that's where there are actual pilots, not drivers or helmsmen.

In the English language, a "pilot" has meant "one who steers a ship" for almost 500 years. In 1848 it got used for balloonists, in 1907 it got used for airplane steering people.

I doubt there are a lot of people currently alive who associate the 'pilot' term with maritime activities, unless it's explicitly stated.

I vote for calling it "toddler has the wheel!" (Tm)

Because that's exactly how you should treat it.

On second thought maybe "2nd grader has the wheel" but that's not as catchy.

How about "auto 1st day with learners permit".

What we learn is: Autopilot is a very clear name for the commenters in this thread. These commenters understand that an autopilot does not replace a driver. Apparently, it's not such a clear name for other commenters on the same post, and the company called Tesla, who argue that autopilot is safer than a driver.

I think maybe you don't understand what autopilot actually does on a plane...but regardless I agree it was a dumb name that made sense to engineers but should have been shot down immediately by marketing and legal.

This name has certainly been HIGHLY vetted by both marketing and legal. I would wager that the name "Autopilot" was created by marketing, not engineering.

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