I would soonest put my trust in a ...
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Robotic chef (Score:2, Insightful)
We more or less have fully automated food processing lines already. Most of the canned and frozen stuff in your local supermarket never sees the touch of a human hand.
Re:Robotic chef (Score:2)
Yes, and it's AWFUL. Hence, the robotic chef is out. I said airplane, because they're pretty much robotic right now and they seem to work fine.
Re:Robotic chef (Score:2)
Don't hate the robot, hate the recipe.
Speak for yourself... (Score:2)
My robotic chef (for certain values of "chef" [wikipedia.org]) makes the food just the way I tell him to, and it's delicious.
Food that is, not the robo-food-maker which tastes the way all robots do. Like plastic, metal and if you're not careful - electricity.
As for the plane... Sure. If it's a bomber.
Wouldn't want to be flown in a robotic passenger jet though.
Not because of the robotic part, though I have some issues with machines "doing the thinking" since first I figured out that my fridge "thinks" it's closed when I press it's light switch.
Just don't trust the humans who would replace already dirt cheap humans with cheaper robots. Or their "safety standards".
I can already see a plane full of passengers happily flying into a mountain due to a dirty sensor somewhere.
Which wasn't cleaned properly cause the ground crew was "downsized", so now they don't clean the parts of the plane that aren't visible from a distance.
Re:Speak for yourself... (Score:2)
Re:Speak for yourself... (Score:2)
Wouldn't want to be flown in a robotic passenger jet though.
Bad news, you already have been!
The pilots are there for little more than taxi control and emergency backup as it is. This is why I voted "plane." Because it's the most established technology so far.
Re:Speak for yourself... (Score:2)
Which wasn't cleaned properly
wasn't cleaned properly by... a human?
cause the ground crew was "downsized"
downsized by... a human?
so now they don't clean the parts of the plane that aren't visible from a distance.
not visible from a distance by... a human?
Re:Speak for yourself... (Score:2)
Re:Speak for yourself... (Score:2)
Why shouldn't a robo-plane be able to look out the window? If I was building one, I would add cameras various places on the exterior, and always cross reference all measurements before making a decision.
Re:Speak for yourself... (Score:2)
If I were building a human-equivalent AI, I would add sensors at various places on the exterior, and always cross reference all measurements before making a decision.
That was easy.
Re:Speak for yourself... (Score:2)
Re:Robotic chef (Score:2)
While robotic chefs aren't very good at final prep, they do great on processing a great many ingredients. For instance, are you going to cut up, boil, strain, and puree pumpkins, or are you going to take a can of pumpkin from the pantry? Is your homemade pumpkin puree really better than the factory? If its got to be cooked and processed anyway, the factory does a good job. If it ought to be fresh, e.g. salsa, the factory does a lousy job. There is simply no canned salsa that can hold a candle to real fresh salsa.
So robotic chef is out, but robotic kitchen assistant is in.
Re:Robotic chef (Score:2)
Your objection to the robot in the salsa example is not an objection to robotics, but an objection to canned goods. If the robot was in your kitchen, using fresh ingredients, why could it not produce a salsa every bit as good as your own?
On another one of your examples, yes, my pumpkin puree is much better than the factory one, but once again, not likely because I know how to chop, boil, and strain a pumpkin any better than they do, but because it's fresh. If I had a robot in my kitchen doing the work, I'm sure it would do just fine.
The problem isn't robotics per se, it's the factory a long way away making good expected to last for years.
I think that a properly designed kitchen robot could do an excellent job of preparing food to match any recipe you can give it. The only things it wouldn't be able to do are things that are cooked by taste, but honestly, most of those can be reduced to a proper recipe after experimenting the first few times to get the values right.
As for the other robotics, I would trust the robot aircraft, they mostly are these days anyways. But I wouldn't trust the robotic bus, not because I believe it would have trouble driving, but because I don't know how well it would react to all the other idiots on the road. Also because most of the inputs these systems must necessarily use to operate on public roads are highly susceptible to being obscured by weather (what will it do if it can't see any lane markings on a road? or read any of the street signs, or tell what colour a traffic light is? As a human there are many other ways we can guess and approximate how to handle these situations (and I do so frequently) but I don't yet trust robotic vehicles to do so)
Ships are somewhere halfway between aircraft and bus... I think I would trust them on the open ocean, but probably not in a busy harbour.
Re:Robotic chef (Score:2)
A lot of the task of using fresh ingredients has to do with "cutting out the bad spots". I'm pretty sure robotics will eventually be up to this, but at the present it can only recognize bad items in a collection (on a conveyor belt, for instance). I wouldn't trust a robot to cut up my tomatoes and onions. Now I'm wondering how many "bad spots" are in canned pumpkin...
Fresh Pumpkin FTW (Score:2)
Dang it. Now I want to bake a pie.
Mmm. Pie.
Re:Robotic chef (Score:2)
Boat. If it goes wrong, it is using ancient and very very robust technology. It will not sink right away and you'll have time to help yourself or have other people help you.
Re:Robotic chef (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic [wikipedia.org]
While not automated in the way we think of it now, the Titanic did have some revolutionary automated systems.
For example: "automatic watertight doors"
Re:Robotic chef (Score:3)
take a look at the ILS categories [wikimedia.org] - IIIb landings are quite common and depend more or less completely on the plane's autopilot
Re:Robotic chef (Score:2)
You need to go visit a meat packing plant, as you are mistaken. We touch the meat LESS than we used to, but that is all. The weakness in our current food safety IS the humans, and lack of cleanliness. Even with "mechanically separated chicken", humans have been touching the bird all along with the way, And humans are busy touching the machines that will touch the food as well.
No two animals are exactly the same, thus you will always have a degree of human interaction with butchering them.
Re:Robotic chef (Score:2)
I guess though if you found a severed robotic finger in your food, it would be less gross?
It's also very unlikely -- metal detectors are cheap and reliable, I think most food factories already have them.
(I worked at one, briefly. The finished, sealed boxes were passed through the detector one at a time, immediately after being sealed.
Planes (Score:2)
Re:Planes (Score:2)
And there is a lot less to hit - much more room to manouvre and the whole environment is much less complex. Add to that that the whole industry is under much more control and you get a safer option.
easy (Score:2)
that one was easy. Planes, of course - they are already largely automated, with the crew watching the autopilot do its job. Including landing. I don't know 100% about take-off but if it can land, I figure take-off is even easier.
Re:easy (Score:2)
Take offs are easy: Apply power, and at a certain airspeed, the aircraft will lift off the runway. As long as you know the performance parameters of the aircraft, you just need to make sure you have a long enough runway. (The Cessna 172 is a wonderful aircraft this way, even fairly short runways are plenty long for it. You literally just push in the throttle, and before you get to the end of the runway, you're airborne, without touching anything else. -- Barring crosswinds, of course.)
Landings are easy, too: Decrease power, and the aircraft will descend to the ground.
What? You wanted to SURVIVE the landing? Psh.....
Re:easy (Score:2)
Sorry, while "Sully" did an excellent job, it wasn't incomparable. There are similar-but-not-so-newsworthy incidents on a yearly basis. It's just that in THOSE incidents, the pilot makes it to a proper runway. I have a college buddy who is an Air Force B-1 pilot who had an EXTREMELY similar situation happen. He landed in a field. Because it was a field in the country surrounding an Air Force Base, and not a river next to New York City, it didn't make the news. (Also, significantly fewer people in the plane.)
Re:easy (Score:2)
Re:easy (Score:2)
Spouse (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Spouse (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not sure I want robotic fingers "down there" which might decide to fork and then segmentation fault. The resulting core dump isn't something I want to clean up either.
And I'd be especially wary of any that have the ability to Terminate and Stay Resident.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:Spouse (Score:2)
And most of us don't even have a spouse or a girl/boyfriend in flesh. :P
Re:Spouse (Score:2)
Yes but be very very careful if you get the model with a built-in pencil sharpener
boat (Score:2)
If it malfunctions, just shut it off and call for help. The majority of its travels in the open sea don't require much precision. In am emergency, just about anyone can be guided on how to drive a boat over the radio (if they cannot figure it out them self). The biggest drawback would be that if it does malfunction, you may never know it.
A sub is another story.
Re:boat (Score:2)
For small pleasure boats this should be fine. My concern would be large cargo ships and oil tankers. They often navigate narrow channels. The first sign of a malfunction could be when the hull strikes a rock and fuel and cargo start tumbling into the bay. Experienced skippers also know a thing or two about the weather conditions of their run.
Context (Score:2)
Robots/automation would be/are able to handle any of these tasks under perfect conditions. Google has cars that drive themselves [nytimes.com] with a passenger in the driver's seat, as mandated by law. As pointed out above, automatic pilots can already fly planes over the entire flight, rotations included. Food preparation may also been dome automatically, etc. etc.
Where robots may fail, al least at present, is in extreme conditions or when experience needs to be applied.
Let's look at planes. A robot can't see other than through its instruments. What if a pitot tube is clogged? How does a robot decide between a malfunctioning artificial horizon and the real one? Could a robot make emergency landings like the Gimli glider or Air Transat Flight 236? Could a robot detect the difference between a bird likely to fly away and a piece of debris on the runway before it decides to abort a full-speed take-off? I don't yet trust a plane without a pilot to oversee it.
Could a robot chef detect a leak that contaminates the food? A smear of motor oil?
Assuming there's some form of communication available, the least damage in a failure has to be a robotic ship. Navigation is simple, operation is slow, and the rules of emergency are fairly simple. The only real danger in malfunction is during docking, and even then the damage is primarily material with injuries rather than fatalities.
Cars and buses are dangerous as it is, not necessarily from robots, but from idiot drivers and cyclists.
If I'm putting my life in the hands of a robot today, it will be on a ship.
Ctrl-Alt-Delete (Score:2)
Re:Ctrl-Alt-Delete (Score:2)
Someone's clearly not thinking ... ...
Someone's not thinking clearly
Ctrl-Alt-Del reboots the system. When it comes back up, it does exactly what it was doing before.
Only faster.
Re:Ctrl-Alt-Delete (Score:2)
Not true at all! When a Windows machine comes back up, it resumes doing exactly what it was doing when you rebooted it - crashing, or downloading patches.
Robotic plane/airship (Score:2)
Non-creepily Spouse (Score:2)
Unless the robot tries to murder me, it's the one with the least consequences of failure. Vehicles could kill all occupants, chefs could poison anyone who eats its produce, and all without a hint of malice or purpose to the act. A robotic spouse wouldn't be likely to poison you since you control access to ingredients, or can at least easily check, rampaging around the house localizes damage, etc.
Of course, I'm differentiating between "spouse" and "Sex-bot," because I wouldn't trust a fully-AI sex-bot any time soon.
Missing option: Robotic Sheep (Score:2)
It seems to make sense that if Androids dream of Electric Sheep, I should start dreaming of Robotic Sheep any day now.
Well that's what Cyborgs ought to do, don't you think?
Besides - given the alternatives, at the current level of robotic technology that's about the level I'd be comfortable with a fully robotic solution ;-)
If things go as well as I hope within 10 years I will have a large, heavily advanced robotic part in me. An Artificial Lung, to be specific. They've already got them working, so I hope that in 10 years I can add one to my heavily reduced capacity, and maybe even move further downwards from the oxygen levels at the peak of Kilimanjaro, or so.
You know, you guys at sea level have way more oxygen. And if I could get an artificial lung added to my current heavily oxygen-limited capacity (If I tried participating in the Olympics (friends are welcome to start the jokes about me qualifying for the olympics just about now), I'd be disqualified for the number of red blood cells in my blood samples. Blood doping, the birth-defect way. Would be cool to suddenly have a working body again. I'll need some kind of pump for my heart function at some point, though, as my heart is growing alarmingly large.
These are the problems microrobotics will (and is) solving, and also the parts we'll come to trust first.
Would also be cool if the 'Part-Robotic Superhero' things turn out to be realistic. Given the levels of recent top-notch military technology, I rather believe I'd become a fairly effective soldier as a cyborg/enhanced human. I hope they don't stick optical cables [stanford.edu] into my brain - because it does seem preferable to be in control of my own body.
I wonder when we'll see partly braindead soldiers 'resurrected' as remote-controlled flesh drones utilizing two-way optogenetics and stem cell networks...
Re:Missing option: Robotic Sheep (Score:2)
I think there must be a joke in here combining Robot Spouses and "where men are men and sheep are nervous", but I'm not quite coming up with it.
Re:Missing option: Robotic Sheep (Score:2)
Whatever you come up with, it should also reference how he "will have a large, heavily advanced robotic part in me"...
Re:Missing option: Robotic Sheep (Score:2)
Would those robotic sheep produce steel wool?
Robotic Train (Score:2)
Why the hell don't we have these yet? Train-on-train collisions are absolutely preventable.
Re:Robotic Train (Score:2)
We have. For example in Nuremberg Germany they have robotic suburban railway which can even share the tracks with human controlled devices. High speed trains are computer controlled when on route. However, they need a "pilot" when they leave the high speed route. So technically we are already there. It is a question of implementation. And there is one other issue: When a suicide uses a train as his/her way of ending the live, someone has to call the police...
Re:Robotic Train (Score:2)
It's the future now (Score:2)
Re:It's the future now (Score:2)
"Buses and cars with autopilots and automated navigation and active collision avoidance will be with us within the decade"
Bet you $100.00 they wont.
Who do you sue when an autopilot car runs over someone? The legal system alone wont allow this stuff.
Spouse, obviously... (Score:2)
Robotic Bender (Score:2)
On second thought, maybe not ...
Repeal Prop Infinity! (Score:2)
Autopilot (Score:2)
We've been putting our trust in robotic airplanes for decades, now.
You misspelled 'Thrust' (Score:2)
Definition of "robot" (Score:2)
Some have said that we currently have automated kitchens and autopilots, but these are not robots. They follow predefined algorithms with no "creativity", no real decision making. Perhaps autopilots are closer than automated kitchens, but to be a "robot chef" it has to decide what ingredients to use, not just follow a recipe. If it mis-reads a quantity or an ingredient label then it needs to be able to work out itself that something is wrong and correct it in order to qualify as a robot in my opinion.
Re:Definition of "robot" (Score:2)
"Some have said that we currently have automated kitchens and autopilots, but these are not robots. They follow predefined algorithms with no "creativity", no real decision making. "
REally? modern autopilots will do collision avoidance, that's making a decision.
No it wont say, "hmm, I need to avoid that mountain. I'm in a good mood.. let's do it upside down while flashing the landing lights"
Obligatory Simpsons (Score:2)
Release the robotic Richard Simmons!
Robotic Plane... (Score:2)
Already there kiddies. you do it every time you fly... The pilot is there in case the "push to land" button fails to do what it is supposed to.
Re:Robotic Chef (Score:2)
I don't think you realize yet just how many planes are already capable of taking off and landing safely, and do so all the time.
Re:Robotic Chef (Score:2)
I think there is a looming usability problem here. Once you go (say) 70% automatic, with a human taking over when necessary the human pilot/driver loses their skills. We are seeing this now where GPS equipped drivers start doing stupid things like driving in to rivers when the GPS gives incorrect information. I don't think it is going to be safe for drivers with the current training to use semiautomatic cars, and I think current experience is showing that airline pilots lose normal flying skills and are unable to take over in emergencies. The recent crash in the Atlantic is an example of this.
Re:Robotic Chef (Score:3)
Re: the GPS example; is it not possible that rather than becoming inexperienced these days, drivers were always making stupid route decisions but either a) they didn't get reported as much because there's less interest in someone mistrusting an old map, or b) they got reported but you don't never heard it or don't remember because, let's be honest, "person drives car into lake, feels slightly embarrassed" isn't the kind of huge headline people will be talking about in 50 years?
I mean, the number of cars and drivers on the road, the percentage of those using GPS, and our access to news are all values that are increasing, and all would create a rise in the number of stories you've read about people following GPS to a fault, before we even factor in whether people are actually driving worse nowadays.
Re:Robotic Chef (Score:2)
Re:Robotic Che (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Robotic Che (Score:3)
The problem isn't that the automated systems can do the job, it's that the humans are necessary for when the shit hits the fan and the automated systems are incapable. Some day we'll be able to fly in a plane which has no cockpit and no pilots, where first class (zeroth class?) passengers can sit in the rounded nose with a great view out the forward-facing windows. I chose the robotic ship option because the failure mode there is to float (submarine excepted, of course). The failure mode of an airplane is a violent fireball on the tarmac.
Re:Robotic Che (Score:2)
I chose the robotic ship option because the failure mode there is to float (submarine excepted, of course). The failure mode of an airplane is a violent fireball on the tarmac.
That is a serious oversimplification [wikipedia.org]. Being crunched against the cliffs because your robot captain took a segfault during a storm or ramming another boat could be quite deadly. I picked airplane because it's robotically "simple" as the airplane doesn't really interact much with anything else so the failure modes are quite limited and pretty much all the possible recovery methods can be executed by a computer. There's after all very little a pilot can do physically.
Re:Robotic Che (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Robotic Che (Score:2)
How good is the state-of-art for automatic take-off and landing? Does it often happen that something goes wrong and you have to overtake?
Re:Robotic Che (Score:2)
Re:Robotic Che (Score:2)
I am sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but if you have travelled by plane a bit in the last couple of years, there is more than a fair chance that some of those planes did earn your trust, even if neither of you knew it
None of those systems solves the ground control problem; all landings devolve to a "robotic bus" problem at the very end trying to get to the terminal.
The robotic plane is always going to be riskier than the robotic bus, because robotic bus is a small subset of robotic plane.
Several terrible accidents with massive loss of life have happened when both planes were already on the ground.
Re:Robotic Che (Score:2)
I disagree. Ground traffic at an airport is far more structured and controlled than traffic on the roads most buses have to travel. Robotics excel at structured and controlled, they don't do so well in chaos and unpredictability.
There have been terrible accidents on the ground at airports, but how many of those were caused because of human error that may not have happened had a robot been at the controls and followed all instructions exactly?
Re:Robotic Che (Score:2)
I am sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but if you have travelled by plane a bit in the last couple of years, there is more than a fair chance that some of those planes did earn your trust, even if neither of you knew it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland [wikipedia.org]
Not to mention that you probably moved between terminals on a robotic tram or rail of some sort.
Re:Robotic Chef (Score:2)
Plane - in the air it might do fine, I don't think I can trust it to land/take off (the most dangerous parts)
Why not, they already are able to handle the landing. Check youtube for some low/zero visibility landings performed by different ILS systems. They are really impressive. And while 95% of my processed food is already prepared and cooked by robots, I don't think I want one in my kitchen. Fresh food varies, I wouldn't believe a robot could adjust recipes to match. Yet.
Re:Robotic Chef (Score:2)
Plane - in the air it might do fine, I don't think I can trust it to land/take off (the most dangerous parts)
Why not, they already are able to handle the landing. Check youtube for some low/zero visibility landings performed by pilots using different ILS systems. They are really impressive. And while 95% of my processed food is already prepared and cooked by robots, I don't think I want one in my kitchen. Fresh food varies, I wouldn't believe a robot could adjust recipes to match. Yet.
ftfy.
Re:Robotic Chef (Score:2)
no, actually you didn't fix it. There are autopilot systems out there that can and do land planes on a regular basis. These days, the pilot is really only there in case things go pear-shaped, and the horror-movie situation of a civilian on a plane having to be talked through an emergency landing simply wouldn't happen... ground control may have to talk him through how to turn on the autopilot and tell it to land, but that's about it.
Re:Robotic Chef (Score:2)
A robotic road system is far easier, and would save so many more lives (and energy) that there's no comparison.
Re:Robotic Chef (Score:4, Funny)
Spouse - Handles my "precious cargo"... this would probably be the last thing I'd want to trust.
I think you misunderstood this one. The option is for a robotic spouse, not a robotic mistress. This robot will emphatically not be touching your cargo -- be it precious or otherwise. In fact it's really more akin to an alarm clock that will go off at various points throughout the day at the slightest action or perceived lack of action from yourself or, in some cases without any discernible trigger whatsoever.
Yeah, on second thoughts let's scratch that one anyway.
Re:Robotic Chef (Score:2)
more akin to an alarm clock that will go off at various points throughout the day at the slightest action or perceived lack of action from yourself or, in some cases without any discernible trigger whatsoever.
I would expect it to have a rotary adjustable mood control [mp3lyrics.org].
Re:Robotic Chef (Score:2)
1. Surly
2. Mean
3. Vicious
4. Brutal
Re:Robotic Spouse (Score:2)
Spouse - Handles my "precious cargo"... this would probably be the last thing I'd want to trust.
I think you misunderstood this one. The option is for a robotic spouse, not a robotic mistress. This robot will emphatically not be touching your cargo -- be it precious or otherwise. In fact it's really more akin to an alarm clock that will go off at various points throughout the day at the slightest action or perceived lack of action from yourself or, in some cases without any discernible trigger whatsoever.
Yeah, on second thoughts let's scratch that one anyway.
Just make certain she isn't equipped with machine gun jubblies.
Re:None of the above (Score:2)
I don't think planes are going to realize they don't need passengers to carry. That's where the money comes from.
Re:None of the above (Score:2)
Re:None of the above (Score:2)
Hell, as long as they have access to the internet, they could just download the whole thing and then sit in a hanger listening to MP3s.
"Well you're in a pack of trouble with the record companies there, son."
Re:A wife that runs Linux, and offers SSH access. (Score:2)
Re:A wife that runs Linux, and offers SSH access. (Score:2)
Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.
You mean a harem?
Re:A wife that runs Linux, and offers SSH access. (Score:3)
There are better ways to get into your wife than SSH.
To be fair, a lot of Slashdotters have no way of knowing that.
Re:A wife that runs Linux, and offers SSH access. (Score:2)
But none quite as secure.
Re:A wife that runs Linux, and offers SSH access. (Score:4, Funny)
There are better ways to get into your wife than SSH.
It helps if you try an adequate port knocking implementation first.
Re:An interesting and peculiar poll (Score:2)
Robot chefs are an impossibility. The element that differentiates a chef from a cook is the creative intangible. It cannot be robotified.
How about a way for the user to grade the dining experience with the robot making minor alterations to recipes every time it cooks and using statistical analysis to figure out the "optimal" recipe for each meal (hell, it wouldn't even be very hard to have it make qualified guesses as to what ingredients it could try using in recipes even though they're not in the recipe based just on the owner's previous appreciation of various ingredient combinations)?
I'm not saying I could build one myself but the basics required for it to constantly improve your dining experience are relatively easy to implement. Don't like tomatoes? When you tell it to make a burger it will skip tomatoes because it "knows" that you generally dislike food with tomatoes (even though you haven't explicitly told it not to use tomatoes). Want to eat healthy? Tell it to give priority to low-calorie high-fiber food whenever possible (and since it's a robot it won't think it's a pain in the ass, it just runs through its recipe collection and tries to compose a meal that matches your request and its knowledge of your general food preferences, essentially composing new recipes from existing ones and logging which "creations" are more or less popular).
Re:An interesting and peculiar poll (Score:2)
Re:Spouse. (Score:2)
No way can a robot go as haywire as some of the people I've met
and
Though given that I'd use the spouse in the kitchen as much as in the bedroom, it'd count as a chef too. Not to mention a robotic vacuum.
I think your second quote clearly explains the first.
Re:Depends on source model (Score:2)
If I can't see the source code, schematics, mechanical diagrams, etc.; then I can never fully trust it.
When you meet someone new, do you ask for a printout of their DNA before you trust them?
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:Depends on source model (Score:2)
and their behavior is the model for all the foul properties we hate in computers. You often hear computer traits compared to human ones in a negative fashion,because humans have a near monopoly on foul behaviors, and are always working to invent new ones.
It's been said before, but it bears repeating.
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that.
Re:Conspicuously ... (Score:2)
The driverless trains I have been on are fantastic. As reliable as elevators.
Re:Airspace FTW (Score:2)
Millions of travellers place their lives in the hands of a robotic airplane on a daily basis already. Autopilot. They've already evolved to the point where they can land/takeoff, and have been able to keep a plane flying level and on course for decades. NASA and the FAA have even been working on an autopilot that can control a plane that has had most of its flight control surfaces removed or blown off, and needs to control the attitude/pitch/bearing using engine speed modulation. The human pilot is really there just to handle the landing/takeoff, and to take over in the event of an emergency.
Re:Airspace FTW (Score:2)
Was talking with one of the LifeFlight of Maine EMTs the other day, with the IFR system that ME, MA and NH have in place, they have just gotten FAA approval for IFR highways.
Picture This, you're in Fort Kent, ME, and need to get to Mass. General *FAST*, they load you on the helicopter, the pilot lifts off, and takes his hands off the stick. Next thing (about 4 hours later) you are 50 feet above the helipad in Boston.
Supposedly this is a First In The Nation thing, but with the IFR post at all of the Maine hospitals, the LifeFlight helicopters can already do final approach to 50 feet above the pad unassisted.
I Trust robotic planes
Re:Planes (Score:2)
I'm actually surprised we still have pilots.
Autopilots have come a long way. The FAA is considering a rule change to replace the first officer with a dog. The captain's job will be to feed and entertain the dog. The dog's job will be to bite the captain should he try to touch the controls.
Re:What about the robotic overlords? (Score:2)
Redundant. Spouse is already an option.
Re:I want a highly automated cargo transport syste (Score:2)
"You could even add requirements to the system, like "goods must be refrigerated at all times" or "must be delivered in 30 minutes or less.""
Oh that will be fun... Set both those requirements on a shipment from HongKong to NYC.
Re:Robotic Politicians (Score:2)
Canadians tried it, didn't work out so well for them...