> if "Full Self-Driving" doesn't imply autonomy, what is it supposed to imply?
100% agree. Furthermore, if neither "Full Self-Driving" nor "Autopilot" are meant to imply autonomy, what term of art would imply that?
Both of those terms imply autonomy IMHO, and if we're proposing to (eventually) introduce a 3rd term which Tesla agrees would imply autonomy, then it feels like splitting hairs to try and argue that the first two don't but the 3rd does.
Pretty much all of the other car companies have managed to settle on rather generic[0] names for their level 2-3 autonomy implementations: Ford BlueCruise, GM Super Cruise, BMW Driving Assistance Professional, Mercedes Drive Pilot (the first certified level 3 system in the US), Toyota Safety Sense 3.0, Rivian Highway Assist, etc.
The names all imply that the car is doing something to help you drive, but none of them imply further meaning about their capability or even suggest anything about their autonomy. Tesla is pretty much the only company to embrace names--Autopilot, and later, "Full Self-Driving"--that come loaded with cultural and linguistic meaning.
Doing so allowed Tesla to borrow the excitement and prestige of future developments: look not so much at where we are, but where we're going and how some small pieces of that future are there in the current system. Which worked great for their marketing efforts, but didn't do so well in educating drivers about what their cars were actually capable of or doing.
Anyhow, the SAE eventually developed a taxonomy with six levels of driving automation, which were later adopted by the Department of Transportation.[1] It's not a perfect taxonomy, but it does illustrate that autonomy is a spectrum. But it's definitely intended more for the industry and regulators rather than consumers; if a car has "level three conditional automation" systems, that needs additional context to be useful to consumers.
It doesn’t matter at all what they claim they meant. Self driving and autopilot are both terms in the zeitgeist from sci-fi that objectively refer to autonomous behavior. Tesla claiming anything else is what they meant is almost certainly bad faith and even if it isn’t it should still be false advertising simply because they chose these terms.
Exactly where Tesla’s marketing failed. It irritates me as a pilot that they have given it a new definition.
Autopilots have been around a long time, and have a very specific meaning. They require training, knowing what their limitations are, constant monitoring, and frequent manual input.
I’m not sure what Tesla thought they were doing by billing it as a “hands off” term.
As much as I dislike Musk and the mess Tesla has created with "Full self-driving", I don't think you can blame Tesla marketing for the public misconception of what an aircraft autopilot does.
Because, the Tesla autopilot feature is actually rather similar to a simple aircraft autopilot, with very similar limitations. At its core, it's really just a lane following driver assist, combined with adaptive cruise control. If you ignore the "adaptive" part, it's roughly equivalent to an aircraft autopilot in heading mode, plus autothrottle.
Tesla marketing did lean into that misconception, benefited from it and might have made it worse. But they didn't create it, and the public misconception predates Tesla by a long margin... it just didn't really matter before then.
From what I can tell, the misconception arises from the fact that the public know flying an aircraft is hard, the fact that pilots do so much training proves that. Therefore, they assume an aircraft autopilot must be advanced to handle the perceived complexity of keeping an aircraft stable in the air.
The introduction of autoland, and the way it was presented in magazine articles by journalists, probably made the problem much worse.
The actual algorithms used for autopilots are really simple.
A simple autopilot will do nothing more than hold the wings level so the pilot doesn't need to continually keep their hands on the controls. From there, more functionality is added as layers.
Heading mode makes the autopilot always point towards a compass heading. Nav mode is a computer that changes requested compass heading every time it reaches a Nav point.
A more advanced autopilot will add modes for speed-hold and altitude-hold that trade between altitude and speed. When combined with the auto-throttle, the autopilot can implement constant rate climbs and decent.
The autoland mode simply updates to heading mode and constant rate decent to follow the glide slope.
While it's true that a modern autopilot can takeoff, fly to a destination and land without the pilots touching the flight controls, the pilot is required to constantly switch between the various modes, feed nav points, and adjust the autopilots mode. At the same time, the pilots are doing a bunch of other tasks to keep the plane flying and safe.
The simplicity is very intentional. Pilots are expected to know what the autopilot is doing at any point and understand why the autopilot is doing that. They are expected to spot when it's doing something weird very quickly and disconnect it.
Constant adjustment based on density altitude changes, waypoint changes, ATC inputs, depending on turbulence - disable or alter inputs, it is required to be constantly monitored (I am a low hour pilot, but have had one need to be disconnected due to malfunction).
It’s basically a glorified cruise control for airplanes. It will fly a general route, but anything beyond that requires manual input (at least for small plane autopilots).
A good example might be a cop rerouting traffic. This would be an ATC route change in the airplane world necessitating you to reprogram waypoints. I’m afraid of what Tesla’s “autopilot” does in this situation.
One last addition edit - in the airplane world, the PIC has ultimate control and responsibility over the airplane. There are a ton of disclaimers and training that goes along with a real autopilot that makes sure you know what its limitations are. Tesla also has failed here IMO.
100% agree. Furthermore, if neither "Full Self-Driving" nor "Autopilot" are meant to imply autonomy, what term of art would imply that?
Both of those terms imply autonomy IMHO, and if we're proposing to (eventually) introduce a 3rd term which Tesla agrees would imply autonomy, then it feels like splitting hairs to try and argue that the first two don't but the 3rd does.