Self-driving cars and airplanes are technologies that can move on their own without human intervention, using guidance and control systems to follow precise routes. This technology has the potential to deliver a range of benefits, including reducing traffic accidents, easing congestion, and reducing driving stress, but it is important to address legal and ethical issues.
There is currently a boom in autonomous vehicle development around the world. The United States and Europe, the leaders in autonomous vehicle development, have already developed prototypes that have been tested on real-world roads and are on the verge of commercialization. These self-driving cars are the closest to fulfilling the machine’s purpose of “doing the hard work for you,” in that they can drive without any human interaction, just by entering a starting point and destination. As such, self-driving cars represent a major milestone in the realization of the human desire to develop machines that can do things for us.
However, the development of self-driving cars is not just a technical challenge, but also a legal and ethical one. On the legal front, clarifying who is liable when a self-driving car causes an accident is an important issue, and there are also privacy concerns about the vast amounts of data that self-driving cars collect while driving. On the ethical side, we need to discuss what judgments autonomous vehicles should make to avoid accidents. For example, programming the actions that self-driving cars should choose to take to cause the least amount of damage in the event of an inevitable accident is emerging as a highly complex and sensitive issue.
If these legal and ethical issues are resolved, self-driving cars could make a significant contribution to reducing traffic accidents, easing congestion, and reducing the stress of driving, but we’re still in the process of working through these issues as the technology develops.
However, long before self-driving cars, there was a form of transportation that moved on its own without human intervention: airplanes. For decades now, airplanes have been carrying passengers and cargo, equipped with autopilots that allow them to fly themselves once they’ve been given an origin, destination, and course. With the development of autopilots, the role of the pilot has shifted from being the sole pilot of the plane to letting the autopilot do most of the flying, and only taking over in critical situations or when human judgment is required. This form of transportation has been with us longer than you might think, so how did airplanes become a safe form of transportation without human piloting? In this article, we’ll take a look at how airplanes are able to fly themselves along a given course.
In order for an airplane to fly itself without human control, it must be equipped with a Guidance&Control system. First, “guidance” is when a human inputs the desired movement of the airplane, a course, into the airplane’s computer to establish a baseline for the trajectory the airplane should follow. However, just because the airplane is given a course to follow doesn’t mean that the airplane will actually follow that course perfectly, and it is possible for the airplane to deviate from the course during the flight. To control this, you need “control,” which means to direct the airplane’s movements so that it follows the guidance commands it has been given, i.e., a set course. An airplane is equipped with a number of control-related devices that allow the airplane to change speed and direction, and control calculates the movements of these devices that are necessary for the airplane to fly along the course it has been given and makes the devices act accordingly. Similarly, if the airplane is off course, control issues commands that adjust the movements of the airplane’s controls to bring the airplane back on course.
To illustrate this concept of guidance/control using the example of a runner running a 100-meter dash around a track, the track is the trajectory that the runner should move along-the “guidance” command. But even if the runner is perfectly aware of the path he or she should take, the runner doesn’t actually run along the track as it is. A person’s body may be asymmetrical, leaning either to the left or right, or a wind blowing from the side may change the direction in which the person runs. These external factors that affect the path a person takes prevent them from running along a “guided” path. This is when the brain, acting as the ‘control’ system, sends commands to the muscles of the athlete’s body to continuously correct the running path so that the athlete stays on the correct track.
The guidance and control system in an airplane can be broken down into two parts. The first part is the part that generates the guidance commands. Before you start flying, you plan your flight in advance and enter the route into the plane’s autopilot, so that in real time during the flight, the plane knows what course to follow. However, if a weather event that threatens the flight, such as a sudden storm, occurs on the planned course, it may change the plan mid-flight and generate new guidance commands for a different route that avoids the threat. The second part of the process involves issuing control commands to the plane’s controls so that the plane can move according to the guidance commands. In the days before autopilot, humans would use their five senses to determine the current attitude and position of the airplane, and then determine and manipulate the necessary movements of the airplane’s controls accordingly. Today, however, autopilot has taken over this human role, using the precise and fast computational power of computers to issue control commands to the airplane. First, the plane’s current position and attitude are obtained from a number of measurement tools on the plane, including GPS, altimeters, gyroscopes, and speed instruments, and then the plane’s controls are commanded by calculating how much error they have from the guidance commands. These controls consist of engine throttles that change the speed of the airplane and multiple control surfaces that change the direction of the airplane, allowing all of the variables involved in the airplane’s movement to change as commanded. This information processing/commanding scheme is sometimes referred to as a fly-by-wire system because it is all done by electrical signals. A fly-by-wire system like this can be thought of as a computer replacing the cognitive and judgmental skills of a human pilot.
The secret to an airplane’s ability to fly safely along a course without human control is guidance and control: first, the plane is told what course it should fly, and then it calculates the error between its current position and the suggested course and adjusts the controls to compensate for it, returning it to the target course. This principle applies not only to airplanes, but also to anything that moves automatically without human control, such as self-driving cars, drones, and factory machinery. This is because even the most sophisticated design cannot account for all the factors that affect an object, and without guidance and control, unexpected errors will inevitably occur. Just as humans reflect on their current state and change their habits and behaviors from time to time to achieve their desired goals, objects need constant feedback to perform their roles well.
The comparison between self-driving cars and airplanes helps us understand the potential of autonomous technology. Just as airplanes have reliably operated with autonomous navigation systems for decades, self-driving cars will use this technology to significantly change our lives in the future. Autonomous technology has the potential to not only automate transportation, but also revolutionize logistics systems, increase personal mobility, and contribute to environmental protection. This will require continued research and development, as well as societal consensus on legal and ethical issues. As these challenges are met, autonomous driving technology will become more integrated into our lives, and we will enjoy the convenience and safety that the transportation of the future will bring.
