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Comment by noisy_boy | Hacker News Reader

Tesla should just rename their ADS from AutoPilot to CoPilot.

That assumes benign intent. All that we have seen so far is a sales pitch finetuned juuuust on the line "we won't say it's autonomous (or that it's not), but we'll nudge suggestively, point and nod." Of course, when anything happens, the old spiel "we didn't actually say it" comes out.

I understand the argument that Tesla is generally misleading is their selling of Autopilot. I can also understand the argument that no company should be selling this type of semi-autonomous tech that can result in the worst of both human and autonomous driving. But I simply don't understand the argument that the only problem with this feature is the name. It just makes the whole thing seem silly.

We already put numerous requirements on people before they are allowed to legally drive. Why are we not blaming drivers for knowing nothing about their cars beyond the simple name of a feature? You literally can't turn the feature on in a Tesla without it warning you about its limitations. Doesn't the driver have some responsibility to pay attention to those warnings or at least spend a few minutes learning about this feature before they trust it with their lives (and the lives of others)?

I agree, drivers that do not pay attention share the blame too, but is not fair to blame only the drivers, the "autopilot" requires that the human driver maintain 100% attention but is the system monitoring the driver properly, is it trying the best to keep the driver engaged to the road ? No it does not do that because is not comfortable for the customer, so safety is sacrificed.

Or don't borrow from other industries making meaning ambiguous and just call it for what it is: Driver assist

Isn't the point of a copilot that it can safely fly and land a plane unlike an autopilot.

Maybe, but I think that's beside the point. The point is that it's about people's perception of what something should do from it's name. And 99% of the people will associate co-* with a help and auto-* with something that can do it on it's own.

Planes can land entirely on autopilot.

Just requires the airport to have ILS, and a fairly modern autopilot.

Yesbut. It also requires the meat-sack to be sitting in the cockpit telling the autopilot which heading/altitude/waypoint to head to next, listen to ATC instructions, input the correct ILS frequency into the system, etc. And that's when everything goes absolutely fine.

Planes can absolutely land themselves. The only point you're making is that an autopilot cannot entirely replace a pilot, but that was never in contention. The poster above claimed an autopilot cannot land, it can, and it does every single day.

Additionally ILS frequency can be automatically set via electronic charts, particularly if the flight plan contains the destination runway (which isn't always possible).

> Planes can absolutely land themselves.

No. They can’t. Not unless you have a IIIc approach and autopilot. Those things are not common.

If you don’t have both of those things, the pilot must, at minimum, fly the flare (for a IIIb approach, which are somewhat common at large airports).

Even if you have a IIIc approach, the pilot still monitors systems, deploys high lift devices and landing gear, makes the go/no decision. There is no reasonable interpretation of “planes can absolutely land themselves” which is in any way true.

> No. They can’t. Not unless you have a IIIc approach and autopilot. Those things are not common.

So you're saying they can?

Wikipedia has an accurate summary: "[in all cases a CAT III autoland requires the] flight crew to monitor the system behavior very carefully and be ready to take control immediately." Oops.

The problem is that most people don't understand what the term "autopilot" refers to. In airplanes, autopilot can safely control the aircraft in a limited set of circumstances. It can't control the aircraft on the ground, nor can it control the aircraft during takeoff. And it can only land the aircraft on certain types of runways. Crucially, it requires human pilots to be monitoring the progress of the aircraft at all times because there are many situations that can arise while the system is engaged that require a corrective response. This seems to be no different from the Tesla system. Of course, due to the nature of driving on a crowded road versus being up in a relatively empty sky, there's a significant difference in the time available to apply these corrective responses.

Autopilots can in practice control ground manoeuvres, and take-off. That was demonstrated in the 1970s. There simply isn't the commercial impetus to push them to certification; it's cheaper for an airline to cancel a flight than to maintain such a technical capability, mainly due to paperwork.

Some can. Airplane autopilots are tremendously varied. Some are as simple as a gyroscope hooked up to the ailerons to keep the wings level. I’m always baffled as to why people think “autopilot” implies any sort of autonomy.

Probably because that's what the name suggests.

as a Greek and Latin student, there are quite a lot of English words that don't quite mean what I would expect. if it's really important that I understand how a word is normally used in English (eg, some critical safety context), I look it up.

there are words and expressions well know from pop culture, like say time travel, do you need to look up some physics book to find the definition or find some experiments where they prove time travel is or not possible ?

I don't usually make $40,000 decisions that depend on time travel.

How do you research it though? Do you read reviews, watch videos or you search online for the technical manuals with all the details before you buy ?

The reviews and videos may not contain all the details you will get in the technical manual that you don't have before you get the car.

if I'm spending that much money on something I can die in, you better believe I'm reading reviews in all the major car publications (and btw, all the in depth reviews do a pretty good job explaining what you need to know about tesla autopilot), watching reviews on YouTube, seeing what owners have to say on the relevant forums, etc. If the car has some new safety feature that I don't understand, I'm definitely reading everything the manual has to say about it before I drive off the lot.

then again I'm one of those weird people who actually takes the recommended safety precautions when I do dangerous things. I also do crazy stuff like checking my tire pressure.

> I’m always baffled as to why people think “autopilot” implies any sort of autonomy.

It is literally in the name.

“Auto” just means “self.” Do autobiographies write themselves? Does the word “automobile” imply no driver is needed?

It doesn't "just" mean that. You aren't arguing in good faith when you choose to selectively use and ignore dictionary definitions of common words as it conveniences you.

Auto can mean also automatic, autonomous , you are trying to defend the meaning of autopilot by bringing aviation definition, it would be similar to me telling all the people that they are using language wrong because in chemistry or math the word X ids defined to mean something a bit different.

in physics acceleration is used when things slow down too, but at least in my language this is weird and in day to day use acceleration means increase in speed, you want to understand how/why most people define autopilot as more then dr5iver assist then just ask them and stop telling them they are wrong because in domain X the word is used different.

I’m not saying they’re wrong. I’m saying their understanding of the word baffles me. That’s not the same thing, and it’s kind of annoying to be attacked just for not understanding people.

Let me try to explain, people are not knowledgeable on how airplane autopilot works, what people understand when they hear autopilot is from what they had seen in movies or games, read in books or what the words actual mean.

There are contrary examples that normal people would know too. For instance, it’s common to use the phrase “on autopilot” to describe the state of a person who does something really stupid because they were following a routine without thinking.

No but autobiographies are self-biographies, automobiles are self-mobile so an autopilot would self-pilot, i.e. pilot itself

And they do, but that doesn’t mean they’re autonomous or capable of handling any situation. A wing leveler is piloting itself.

Agreed. So "Auto Pilot" == "Self Pilot".

As in, it pilots itself. Which would indeed imply that no driver was needed.

Hah, “just”.

Very few airports have even one cat IIIc approach. Not all modern airliners have an autopilot capable of a IIIc approach (which requires triple redundancy, IIRC).

And you accuse others of arguing in bad faith...

So rename it to "student pilot" and change "driver" to instructor? This is why I don't work in marketing...

This is about cars, in cars driving copilot means something different then airplanes.

The point is that a copilot is there to assist the primary pilot, not be that primary pilot all of the time - even if in emergencies a copilot can take over.

Frankly - if you're asking for emergency "landings" I'd say modern driver assists are probably up to the task. Most have a pretty decent chance of bringing a vehicle to a safe stop. And if it's an emergency, and the primary driver cannot do so - then the currently still inevitable unreliability isn't much of an issue - it's still much, much better than nothing.

Copilot isn't a bad name change. Not that they'll ever do it.

Or link it with cruise control like other manufacturers are doing. The general public kind of gets what cruise control Does, and that sets the right expectation. The public really has no idea what an aviation or marine autopilot system is all about.

Yes, having tried it, I'm a big fan, but they should have called it "Ultra Cruise" or something like that.

I would be OK with regulations requiring them to call it "adaptive cruise control with lane assist" and forbidding automakers from coming up with their own names for it.

Its really Lane Keep assist and Dynamic radar cruise control. Its better than most manufacturer's systems.

This isn't true at all with Navigate On AutoPilot which was released a month or so ago.

You set your destination on the GPS and it will take you exit-to-exit on highways.

This is not lane assist or distance control you see on other cars.

You still have confirm and requires active human participation. Its not like its really "Auto."

You actually don't have to confirm if the exit lane is split from your lane, which is pretty common. It will signal for you and get you into the appropriate lane.

If reaching your destination requires switching lanes into one that is not split from your own, you'll have to confirm it. But that may change in the upcoming weeks or months.

Bolting a GPS-driven highway exit selection onto LKAS+ACC isn't really hard or risky. Once a control system can reliably keep a car safe in freeway traffic including lane keeping (even near gore points), lane changes, matching speed with traffic, and keeping safe distance from the car in front... just picking an exit given a destination address is the easy bit. It's a classic case of Moravec's paradox.

It will also change lanes for you if you signal, and wait for a safe opening if necessary.

This would have also allowed for more fanfare with a fitting name if/when they eventually release a fully autonomous system.

Hopefully one of the (European) consumer protection agencies require them to reduce their misleading marketing soon.

Not that discussion again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot

It doesn’t matter what the technical definition is in aviation. What matters is what expectations about Tesla’s technology it creates for most people.

One would argue the point of marketing is to changes people's expectations.

Do you think that most people know how airplanes autopilot works? What people know is that airplanes can drive and land themselves and human pilots are there as backup/safety.

Euroncap literally flagged it as an issue in their report. So when you say "not that discussion again" are you asking people not to discuss the actual topic of this thread?

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