Truckers protest against autonomous trucks in Missouri

purplepeopleeater said:

In reply to frenchyd :

IIRC they don't take off & land on autopilot.

They use autoland often enough that some pilots are getting rusty at doing it the old fashioned way.  That's basically what caused the crash of Asiana flight 214 a few years ago at SFO.

Airplanes would probably be one of the easier things to make autonomous, except that human piloted planes aren't really autonomous either.  There's a lot of coordination going on with ATC when they're in crowded airspace, and it's all done over crackly, low-fidelity, voice radio circuits.  You're not gonna teach an autopilot to understand those instructions, so it would need a separate digital command circuit.  Let's just say that there are some security issues inherent to this idea. :)

I get the impression that a lot of what commercial pilots do is figure out WTF the controllers are saying over the radio, make sure it makes sense, and then type it into the autopilot.

We’re still a long way from unmanned anything roaming the streets with any regularity.  There’s currently nothing close to dealing with poor weather/roads or urban congestion.  Our management would replace drivers tomorrow if it were remotely possible and so far nothing has been demonstrated that doesn’t panic and shut down when either traffic or road surfaces are less than ideal.