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Tesla To Further Restrict Its Autopilot Software To Prevent Accidents (electrek.co)
Tesla is planning to further restrict its Autopilot mode via a v8.0 software update that will make it much harder for drivers to ignore safety alerts. Tesla's Autopilot currently issues alerts on the dashboard "reading Hold Steering Wheel and the driver has to apply pressure on the wheel to make it go away," reports Electrek. "If you quickly respond to those alerts, the Autopilot's Autosteer and Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC) do not disengage." The system will disengage if you ignore those warnings for too long. Electrek reports: "Now we learn that Tesla is about to introduce a new restriction with the upcoming v8.0 software update to give more weight to the alerts. According to sources familiar with the Autopilot program, Tesla will add a safety restriction that will result in not only the Autopilot disengaging after alerts are repeatedly ignored, but also blocking the driver from re-engaging the feature after it was automatically disengaged. The driver will not be able to reactivate the Autopilot until the car is stopped and put in 'Park.' So far, it looks like it would only affect the Autosteer feature of the Autopilot and TACC would still be available for the duration of the drive. The goal of the new restriction appears to be to encourage Tesla owners to respond to the visual alert and not to ignore them."
I'm sure we can rig up some sort of clamp that will take care of this.
Have gnu, will travel.
Tesla's Autopilot functions at almost exactly the same level as an aircraft autopilot. Perhaps even better - an aircraft will not automatically detect and avoid other aircraft, only mapped obstacles. A Tesla will automatically brake for other vehicles moving into your lane.
I do agree that "Copilot" would be a better name, but only because people are idiots, not because it's a bad name.
Planes do detect other planes in proximity with the aptly-named proximity warning. Miles in advance. With beeps buzzes and autopilot disengagement. They are called ACAS. There are various levels of support depending on version being used by an aircraft.
If the pilot fails to respond, there's a loud bang and a cut on his paycheck.
Tesla's Autopilot functions at almost exactly the same level as an aircraft autopilot.
Except that most of the time an aircraft on autopilot is a mile or two from ANYTHING. Including the ground. And the parts of a flight where a plane is expected to be nearer to anything the pilot is paying a LOT more attention.
Mid-flight on a long haul, the pilot has to be there, and he has to be awake, but he can be filling out paperwork, reading aircraft manuals, checking maps, etc.
That's NOTHING like what a tesla driver can ever do. A tesla driver needs to be paying attention the same way a pilot does during an automated landing ... the ENTIRE trip. Not only is that completely different from an aircraft pilot, its also an unreasonable / unrealistic expectation.
Yes, real autopilots automatically swerve to avoid other aircraft, and refuse to fly into terrain.
Oh, wait, turns out they don't.
And autoland automatically lands an aircraft right? Oh, turns out the pilots still have to extend the flaps and landing gear, put the right data into the flight management computer, select the approach mode at the correct time, and use it only on runways that are equipped with specially certified ILS Cat III transmitters. And, during the automatic approach, they have to be CONSTANTLY monitoring the system with their hands at the controls ready to initiate a go-around immediately if anything goes wrong (which does happen from time to time). And they dare to call it "autoland"!
Yes, at sufficiently high altitude an autopilot system is hands-off because there isn't really anything you can fly into. That has nothing to do with it being an "autopilot" but simply with the environment it is in. Autopilot at low altitude during approach is hands-on. And it's perfectly safe to drive a Tesla autopilot hands-off in the middle of the Nevada salt flats.
Next up: lawsuit against "automobile" manufacturers because the vehicles don't spontaneously move by themselves as their name implies.