Also, the operating environment is rather stable for aircraft. You won’t find thing’s like construction cones blocking off airspace that was once available. Even if airspace availability was changed, its not likely to create an immediate hazard (with some caveats like military testing ranges)
Autoland is impressive but it really is more equivalent to a system (in a car) that automatically applies the brakes than to a full self driving system.
Autopilot is simple and a solved problem. Self driving is not either.
I'd very much not want to be in an airplane whose landing strategy was "automatically apply the brakes". Navigating to an airport, lining up with the runway, and gently bringing down the plane seems significantly harder than auto-breaking.
Garmin Autoland is much more than "apply the brakes", as I understand. But it's still guiding your plane through an essentially empty environment, not something in the same ballpark as autonomous driving.
Re:CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving
by sudosysgen on Saturday April 03, 2021 @01:05AM
(#26678560)
Well, more or less, the "apply the brakes" system still has to detect obstacles and calculate the optimal way to brake and so on. So it has to deal with dynamic environmenrs. Autoland, not so much.
There are no roads, no obstacles, usually not even other planes constraining your plane for any autopilot situation. With autolanding, "other planes" might start becoming an issue, but it's still a vastly different level from the momentary and immediate coordination necessary between cars on public roadways.