Re:Four hundred miles with Tesla’s autopilot forced me to tr...
by rdtsc on Thursday May 26, 2016 @12:30AM
(#11775445)
> It's due to how humans react to the new feature itself, not because it's a bad feature, or a misunderstanding about how users 'normally' react.
It is not easy but it should be done. Keeping a car steadily between lanes is not easy either, or take self driving cars that is hard. Besides, research into some of this has already been done with aircraft and pilots.
> It's due to how humans react to the new feature itself, not because it's a bad feature, or a misunderstanding about how users 'normally' react.
It is a bad feature. Feature doesn't exist in a void, it exists only because humans are using it. "Human presses the brakes, what to do next?" is a feature with a human in the loop.
> Cognitive burden is a critical consideration in all system design from airplanes to cell phones, but tragically is often overlooked.
Exactly. Moreover "mode confusion" (human not understanding what mode the aircraft autopilots or other systems are in, and then reacting assuming a different mode) is a common cause of crashes.
There were tools and studies specifically geared towards mode confusion:
Asiana 214 is a recent example of pilot assuming the autothrottle was on, but it wasn't, so plane crashed. It is a bit like here, the user assumed Tesla would slow down some but then stay in the automatic mode.
It is not easy but it should be done. Keeping a car steadily between lanes is not easy either, or take self driving cars that is hard. Besides, research into some of this has already been done with aircraft and pilots.
> It's due to how humans react to the new feature itself, not because it's a bad feature, or a misunderstanding about how users 'normally' react.
It is a bad feature. Feature doesn't exist in a void, it exists only because humans are using it. "Human presses the brakes, what to do next?" is a feature with a human in the loop.
> Cognitive burden is a critical consideration in all system design from airplanes to cell phones, but tragically is often overlooked.
Exactly. Moreover "mode confusion" (human not understanding what mode the aircraft autopilots or other systems are in, and then reacting assuming a different mode) is a common cause of crashes.
There were tools and studies specifically geared towards mode confusion:
http://shemesh.larc.nasa.gov/fm/fm-now-mode-confusion.html
Asiana 214 is a recent example of pilot assuming the autothrottle was on, but it wasn't, so plane crashed. It is a bit like here, the user assumed Tesla would slow down some but then stay in the automatic mode.