Ameriflight Drone

This is a good post. You’re all focusing on Tesla autopilot but the tech side of autonomous UAVs already exists (look at the eVTOL world flight testing their vehicles unmanned for example), and you’re seeing the autonomy creep more and more into manned aircraft with the Garmin autoland and these emergency descent products, etc.

The sticking point will be getting the FAA to commit to integrating them into the NAS, certifying them to fly over people (assume SMO NIMBYs here or some other ridiculously restrictive airport lol) and then insuring them.

This will eventually happen but I’m not convinced AMF of all places is going to have deep enough pockets or strong enough lobbying power to do it.

Yeah good luck budging the Federal Government. Ask me how I know...
 
Well, the car was on full self driving for pretty much the entirety of the 40,000 mile road trip, so…

Did you add an extra zero? Because the circumference of the earth is ~25,000 miles. Otherwise I’m about to be really impressed.:)

BEEF SUPREME said:
Yeah good luck budging the Federal Government. Ask me how I know...

Somebody will eventually be successful, given enough political lobbying power and money. The FAA isn’t going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts but eventually they will cave under the pressure upstream in the executive branch or congress. I suspect incremental gains will be made through Part 107 and agencies like Homeland Security which already operate Predator drones in the NAS, but it won’t happen overnight.

Given AMF’s preference for MEL’ed equipment I would be shocked if they turn out to be the ones that take on the lobbying and financial burden to make it happen. :p
 
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Well, the car was on full self driving for pretty much the entirety of the 40,000 mile road trip, so…

Oh, well holy crap! I’m definitely going to dismiss all of the other issues people have had with FSD/Autopilot (including myself), and use your anecdotal experience to prove this thing is ready for Level 5!

Pilots (and apparently landlords), not so good with statistics it seems.
 



I’m not against the technology, I think it’s cool. But there needs to be a reasonable approach to this, and not just fanboys pretending everything works great.
 
Did you add an extra zero? Because the circumference of the earth is ~25,000 miles. Otherwise I’m about to be really impressed.:)

Be impressed. :) I did a several month long road trip back in 2021 during the pandemic. Crisscrossed all over the country, driving around 6-8 hours a day.

Oh, well holy crap! I’m definitely going to dismiss all of the other issues people have had with FSD/Autopilot (including myself), and use your anecdotal experience to prove this thing is ready for Level 5!

Pilots (and apparently landlords), not so good with statistics it seems.

The stats back up my anecdotes. But remember what the claim was: it won’t work in the snow on the mountains. It clearly did. You were wrong.
 
Be impressed. :) I did a several month long road trip back in 2021 during the pandemic. Crisscrossed all over the country, driving around 6-8 hours a day.



The stats back up my anecdotes. But remember what the claim was: it won’t work in the snow on the mountains. It clearly did. You were wrong.

Cool, post the stats please!

I’ve posted multiple videos proving your claim incorrect. Do you think the videos are fake news? Do you think I’m lying about my own experience driving Model 3s?
 
Have any of you Tesla owners had an issue with your insurance recently? I ask because Reuters just ran this article and says Tesla themselves are getting into the insurance business because third party insurance premiums are rising due to the cost of repairs.


Tesla, insurers take different paths to deal with expensive repairs
Tesla, insurers take different paths to deal with expensive repairs

Anecdotally when I was getting estimates to have one of our cars fixed last fall at a major repair shop where in Denver there were a bunch of wrecked Tesla’s parked in their lot. I asked the guy looking at my car about them and he said that getting parts takes forever and dealing with Tesla is a pain.
 
That isn't how statistics work. Autopiloted Teslas are 6 times safer, but there are far fewer Teslas driving than ape-driven cars, so it's nowhere near every 78 minutes. There have only been a handful of crashes total so far. And frankly, those crashes have all been the result of human drivers in the other cars. Not the autopilot.

What’s your source for this?
 
Be impressed. :) I did a several month long road trip back in 2021 during the pandemic. Crisscrossed all over the country, driving around 6-8 hours a day.



The stats back up my anecdotes. But remember what the claim was: it won’t work in the snow on the mountains. It clearly did. You were wrong.
Who cares about the Tesla. I wanna hear about the food stops! Tacos, cheese burger joints, BBQ….

Goodness this dieting sucks.
 
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Have any of you Tesla owners had an issue with your insurance recently? I ask because Reuters just ran this article and says Tesla themselves are getting into the insurance business because third party insurance premiums are rising due to the cost of repairs.


Tesla, insurers take different paths to deal with expensive repairs
Tesla, insurers take different paths to deal with expensive repairs

Anecdotally when I was getting estimates to have one of our cars fixed last fall at a major repair shop where in Denver there were a bunch of wrecked Tesla’s parked in their lot. I asked the guy looking at my car about them and he said that getting parts takes forever and dealing with Tesla is a pain.

We have it on our Model Y. Very good rates, and it uses your driver safety score to set the rate each month.
 
So I’m feeling a bit better (been doing some medical stuff) and would really like to talk about this stuff as it’s related to what I’m doing… I’ll be brief for now before going back to homework.

Suffice it to say,”this is coming” it’s right around the corner, your careers are probably safe for legal reasons and practical reasons, but I bet we see single-pilot 121 cockpits far faster than many folks would think. That’s ok, it’ll be really cool. Maybe the Airbus A420 will be single pilot - I’m only half kidding.

As for self-driving… it’s going to be a bit because it’s even harder than flying. By a lot, that said, that'll probably come first because of how many companies are working on it and the rewards if someone can get it right. We're close but probably not close enough.

I participated in a self-driving robot challenge / semester project last semester. Even lane identification is challenging to get to human levels. Not impossible but getting our crappy robot to drive around a taped off track was not trivial. There are lots of layers to the software, and they all have to work and not confuse each other.

Not only that, computer vision is really • hard. It’s what I’m studying in grad school - it’s not impossible - in principle it’s easy just a series of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), but it’s that AND you have to get it to work in a partially observable environment filled with other (unpredictable) agents - oh and the environment is changing constantly. There’s weather and road raging other drivers and poor vehicle maintenance, and grease on the cameras... yeah - it is not a trivial task.

That, and it’s not enough to be better than a human, that we can do - we need to be so much better than a human so that it’s indistinguishable from perfect before most people and regulators will trust it enough to not have other problems. You think mode confusion and complacency is bad in the airplane? Wait until Randy is using his Tesla to drunk drive home.

Tie that in with how unpredictable the actual operating environment is and it will be a bit before you don’t own a car and just use ubiquitous Johnny Cabs.

I guess this is all to say, "this is going to happen" it's going to be badass, no I don't think you guys will lose your jobs... but maybe the career won't exist in the same way as it does now (or to the extent it exists now) in 30 years.

I actually think that center controllers are a lot more likely to be automation targets too. That may actually be an easier hurdle to clear than automating the flight crew. Anyway, gotta have dinner then do stats homework.
 
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