Autopilot

This morning my parents and I went to a junk/scrap place about thirty minutes drive away.   We took the new car and I had a chance to use the autopilot feature I’d been hearing about.    The feature isn’t new with the Model X, it’s been around on the Model S cars for some time but it wasn’t an option when we got our Model S.  

It sounds really amazing and technologically it is, but what it’s doing for you is fairly straightforward.    It holds the car on the road, in the lane, at the speed limit (or five over) and brakes when there are cars in front of you.    Sounds simple, but think about all the information you process as a human to make that happen:

First, you need to know the speed limit and follow it, including any changes in speed limit.    We can read speed limit signs, how does the car know?  It knows from road mapping data but it also reads road signs and adjusts speed limits based on actual road information versus recorded data.

Second, a human needs to see the lane markers, regardless of road conditions and then keep the car within those lane markers.   We do this without thinking the entire time we’re driving.    I think of all the things the car does with autopilot, this is the most intriguing.   I’ve had adaptive cruise control before.   It could maintain a specific requested speed and would brake when a car slowed down in front of it.   That car also had a lane deviation feature which would vibrate the steering wheel when I got on or near the lane marker lines.   What the car couldn’t do for me was follow the road and steer, braking and speeding up as appropriate.  

Third, a human has to react to unexpected changes in “predictable traffic” such as someone walking across the crosswalk when your light is green.    As a human we maintain constant vigilance of our surroundings expanded into the dimensions of our large metal box known as a car.    For a car to be able to autopilot, it has to do that same role and do it successfully in any situation.

What I’d heard about the autopilot feature was it made driving relaxing and more enjoyable.   I’d been in the car not more than twenty minutes with my parents this morning and I’d gained enough level of trust in the autopilot to stop tensely hovering over the steering wheel with both hands.   I began to gesticulate, I used two hands to open my coffee bottle.   It was fairly transformative to go from theory to practice and then complete comfort in less than half-an-hour.

There are limitations to autopilot.  First, you have to be there.   You can’t go into the back seat and have a nap.   Second, you must interact with the steering wheel every so often to indicate you’re not napping in the front seat.  And third, and most important, autopilot is only available on roads where the car has enough information to drive safely.   It won’t work on neighborhood streets or unmarked roads and it won’t turn-by-turn navigate you to your destination.  

And that’s okay.   Totally okay.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son must have been hungry after school.  In the car he asked me if he could have a snack when he got home.   I told him he could pick something for snack.   Then he asked me,  “when I finish my snack can I have another snack?”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My father asked me today if I really thought my daughter’s sense of smell was more pronounced.   I told him it was hard to tell but that she definitely was more interested in smells than her brother.   Just now as I’m writing this she came downstairs and told me she was cold. I got a blanket and put it over her.   She then told me several things about the blanket.   First she said, “this smells like blanket and cucumber.”  I asked her if she thought we needed to wash the blanket and did she think it was dirty?   She then said, “actually, it smells like chicken nuggets and blanket.”   We never decided if the blanket needed to be washed because dad called us up for dinner.