"the general public has an inaccurate perspective on airplane autopilot systems. Loads of people think pilots simply push a button then sit back and relax as the plane automatically taxis, takes off, flies then lands itself."

Is this just being pedantic? If you say the autopilot doesn't land the plane, maybe a pilot would agree for all I know, but "autoland" seems to be a thing, right? When I read about "autoland" systems, I also notice they use the phrase "autopilot-controlled landing". I'm not convinced this is about inaccuracy so much as imprecision.

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

No, this is not pedantic. An autopilot is a complex system that needs full time management. It looks like this [1], and you need to correctly twiddle the dials every few minutes to get the plane to do what you want. It's not a button, it doesn't avoid traffic, and it doesn't know about the broader flight plan. Even fancy autopilots that can follow waypoints and intercept a localizer and autoland and all that - managing them looks more like programming a crappy computer than pressing a button.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot#/media/File%3AFMS_...

Which means that both pilots 1.set the parameters (not a single button push), 2.follow closely that the plane does what they would have, 3.ready to take over at any moment, as the AP cannot even reliably detect it's not on the happy path; this does take off some of the cognitive load off the pilots, but it's very far from the narrative "push button and have a coffee" that's being peddled here.

In fact, it's more of "hold this heading and glideslope" than anything else - a smarter cruise control, if you will.

"In fact, it's more of "hold this heading and glideslope" than anything else - a smarter cruise control, if you will."

Sounds like Autopilot on Teslas is the same thing as an autopilot on an airplane, so why is everyone angry at them again? Somehow they're responsible for the majority of the public having misconceptions about both?

Somebody is promoting and selling "full self-driving", with fine print specifying "in some indeterminate future". Perhaps that could be...nah, not related at all.

The first automated landing on a commercial flight took place before microprocessors were invented, to give you an idea of complexity. To this day, autoland means that the aircraft follows a radio beam down to runway, pitching slightly up and reducing thrust to idle when radar altimeter reading falls under 50 ft. It's really primitive tech, essentially a line following robot.

Yes, the public holds misconceptions about how much the autopilot on a plane does. But some of their beliefs are accurate, and would be dangerous when extended to a car: like how, when the plane AP is engaged, you don’t need sub-second reaction times for possible obstacles. You do need that in a Tesla.

Fairly sure that you do need that for autoland, to engage TO/GA (for go-around) and take control. Most other cases, AP disengagement indeed means "now we think about what next".

No. Required reaction times would be around 2-3 s. Even if you took 10s, you're not going to die -- you might hit the edge lights though

At which point you're arguing semantics: "it's not the short landing that kills you, it's the impact into whatever you hit there!" You're describing Asiana Airlines 214, whose crash killed 3.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214

No I'm saying the pilot flying an aircraft correctly configured for autoland in which the autoland system encounters a fault does not require subsecond reaction times to avoid a crash.

Asiana Airlines Flight 214 is irrelevant because (1) it was not correctly configured for approach, (2) the autopilot was switched off over a minute before the crash, and (3) the autopilot did not fail.

The parent of this thread was an argument over whether a aircraft flying on autopilot needs the pilot monitoring it to have subsecond reaction times to avoid a crash. It doesn't.

> From what I've seen

Where? How? That's not a scientific statement.

> Loads of people think pilots simply push a button then sit back and relax as the plane automatically taxis, takes off, flies then lands itself.

Who thinks that? That seems like a hyperbole and you can't possibly know.

> Tesla chose to inherit those misconceptions.

Assuming all those above assumptions are true and assuming Tesla reached those same conclusions as the people that didn't know how airplanes work.

Just loads of speculating and attempted mind-reading...

> Autopilot -> Automatic Pilot

Autopilot is one word and has a specific definition in avionics. It keeps the altitude and heading.

If you rip the word apart and magically transform Auto to Automatic you have Automatic and Pilot, but there is no such thing as an automatic pilots, just pilots, that's why autopilot is one word.

Under that same logic automobiles should be automatic mobility devices that self-drive already.

You can't change the definition of a word to meet your argument. You also can't speculate that people probably might think the word may mean this.

Autopilot !== automatic pilot. That's not a thing.

Just expand and define the words, and don't let your knowledge about how the tech works block your ability to reason.

Autopilot -> Automatic Pilot. Automatic: working by itself with little or no direct human control. Pilot: one qualified to control a vehicle. I'd argue if autopilot requires intervention it is hardly automatic and definitely not qualified to operate a vehicle.

Further, consider other automatic devices in most cars, such as the automatic transmission. How do people expect to intervene with a gear shift during normal operation? Never.

Well, I mean, my auto-mobile requires me in order to be mobile so maybe words are more than the sum of their parts.

It's like how 'act' means one thing, 'god' means one thing, but in the right context 'act of god' doesn't mean a supernatural being intervened.

Are you being intentionally caustic? The phrase "running on autopilot" is an established colloquialism for doing something without being mindful of it, and almost every major dictionary definition of "autopilot" states that it is a system used to navigate something without a human.

Demanding a rigorous scientific study on human understanding of a word is simply not necessary when there are multiple recorded videos of people asleep at the wheel with a fucking banana on a string dangling from the steering wheel to fool the system.

So do you have a problem with the name or a problem with people intentionally being stupid?

People trying to fool the system is not Tesla's fault and indicates they are aware of the warnings alerting them they need to pay attention.

If people are dangling bananas they're doing it for attention and you guys are feeding it and blaming the manufacturer.

Changing the product name will not change anything.

Humans will always be a piece of shit sometimes.

I wouldn't normally use it as a source, but Urban Dictionary shows that colloquially plenty of people consider autopilot to be complete automatic control (worryingly, even to the point of blackout drunkenness).

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=autopilot

That's referring to the human condition of "being on autopilot" (aka. your higher cognitive functions aren't doing much and you're brain's operating primarily on reflex). It's generally only used to describe situations where you've done something dumb because you were impaired or weren't really paying attention.