Comment by jki275 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jki275 | Hacker News Reader

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I don't agree, from the perspective of someone who has driven ships, stood console watches on complex combat direction systems, and regularly flies flight simulators for fun.

The UI for driving a vehicle needs to be simple and intuitive. Full Stop.

There is absolutely a place for complex displays. There were 14 people on the bridge the day the McCain had its collision. Any number of them can monitor complex screens with tons of information.

The young Sailor driving the ship needs to know where his rudder sits and what RPM his engines are turning. In fact, there are two of them, and the traditional method is that one drives and monitors the rudder, and one runs the engines. They don't need to worry about complex situations, the helm needs to know the conning officer ordered 5 degrees right rudder, they ordered 5 degrees right rudder with the wheel in front of them, and the screen or indicator in front of them indicates the rudder is right 5 degrees. Similarly, Lee Helm needs to know the conning officer ordered turns for all ahead full, they shifted the great big throttle handles to the all ahead full position, and both engines indicate all head full.

They don't need to know about engine temperatures, synchro and servo status, set and drift, winds, etc. They need to drive the damn ship in the manner they are directed to drive the ship. There were 12 other people on that bridge who could handle all of those things that matter to them. Helm and Lee Helm need to drive the ship.

It sounds like you are knowledgeable about this stuff so if I don’t mind you asking:

Why is it a good idea to use a full human to turn a wheel? The way I understand what you are saying is that the conning officer shouts “5 degrees right rudder” and some dude listens to that and puts the rudder 5 degrees right. I understand that this makes sense if turning the wheel takes physical force. There is someone who provides the smarts which way to turn it, and someone who provides the raw power to do it. But if it requires no excertion to do it, didn’t we just made a shitty voice interface for the conning officer? With all the associated manning requirement and potential for mishearing orders, and potential for confusion? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the conning officer to tap in their desired rudder on the interface themselves?

the conning officer often has tons of other stuff to deal with that require them not to be distracted by having to change course themselves.

So do airplane pilots and you don’t see them shouting yoke orders to a sub-pilot.

This is a practice which I think made sense with older tech where one had to put some thinking into the execution of the steering. (How much to twist the control to achieve 5 degree? Oops a bit overshot, twisting back. Now hold it steady! That kind of thing.) but now that you just peck at a touch screen the actual task is taken over by a servo motor from the sailor. But because the servo doesn’t have ears to hear the command we keep a whole human employed to do the “hear command, shout, peck, shout” loop. That and institutional inertia. If we were designing navy ships for the first time today we would surely not do it like this.

most complex and/or commercial aircraft do share the workload between a pilot-flying, and a pilot-non-flying—in addition to the captain & FO hierarchy you are probably aware of.

I think you will definitely hear the pilot and copilot communicating, and they split up tasking between them -- one flies and one monitors equipment and makes system entries. They're also way way more qualified and educated than SN Timmy who got a few hours of training on how to do his job.

That loop is pretty valuable on the bridge, because it's not just one person driving in a bubble. Having those orders vocalized so everyone hears them and everyone knows what's happening is pretty valuable. UNREP is a very difficult and stressful kind of evolution, and so is driving during flight operations. Things need to be done perfectly and there are a LOT of variables.

We design new ships all the time, and they still generally stick to these ways. CRM isn't a thing only in aircraft.

It's not just about turning the wheel, though, is it? I would assume that much like when driving a car, it's a longer process of being a human PID controller and making small adjustments to angular acceleration based on feedback from the system. It might be useful to remove this mental load from the decision-maker.

When my family drives places we have not been before, the driver focuses on the road and the passenger seat is navigating, planning stops, etc. Sure, the driver could read them off of a GPS unit and improvise stops, but it is safer and (in our experience) better to have a separate person focusing on thinking and planning.

But also it provides a secondary check on the sensibility of the order. If my wife says "take the first right in this roundabout" and the first right does not seem like the way to go, I will do another lap and ask her to double-check. I can do that because I've been surveying the alternatives well ahead of time, which I could do only because I was not focusing on navigating.

I am totally with you here. It's amazing to me how as cars have gotten easier to drive with technology, we've continued to add distractions to the driver as "features".

I don't even listen to music when I'm driving. I mentally make note of my path before I drive and might have the GPS up just to be able to glance at my arrival time or traffic info here and there, but largely I don't even touch the fancy touch screen display while in motion.

All of this, exactly.

>But also it provides a secondary check on the sensibility of the order.

For much the same reason, whenever there is an outage, I like to ensure my teams are running at least two people on the problem. When things are broken and you're trying to un-break them, having one person whose entire concentration is on doing the physical acts requires to un-break things and one person whose concentration is on monitoring things, looking up data, or reading through the SOP helps ensure things are done safely, that you have secondary checks on actions being taken and it also slows things down a little in the "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" sense.

two sets of eyes are always better than one.

Part of it is everybody knows exactly what's happening, but one dude has one job, and that is to put the rudder exactly where it's supposed to be and hold it there. It isn't actually like there's something that holds the rudder in position -- it is manual, like driving a car, and the rudder will move if not held in place. Also, the order might not be rudder left 5, it might be steer course xxx. Then they use their training to hold the ship on that course.

Another thing not always obvious is the conning officer is in training to be the Officer of the Deck. He/She is learning the exact characteristics of the ship while qualifying for the next higher position.

Yes, you are absolutely correct that this can be fully automated -- and it is in merchant ships. Warships are a bit different, you want instant responses, you want people who can think and issue the right orders and people who can evaluate those orders. SN Timmy isn't stupid -- if conning officer is in the middle of an unrep (alongside another ship) and says right instead of left, SN Timmy will repeat back the order, and ten other people heard that order and there's room to stop the disaster before it happens.

You've absolutely got it where merchant shipping is concerned. Warships are different.

> It isn't actually like there's something that holds the rudder in position -- it is manual, like driving a car, and the rudder will move if not held in place.

But i assume you don’t have to keep your finger on the touch screen to keep the rudder from moving?

As I recall, you still input rudder orders with a wheel on these. Maybe you can enter a rudder setting? The system actually can fully automatically drive the ship. You can just enter a navigation plan and it will do the whole thing. The Navy doesn't use that capability though.

Thank you for the answers!

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