Autonomous vehicles are being promoted for exactly their ability to allow the driver to do non-driving functions (like read, eat, nap, or other things).
Ahh, fair enough... I think we're further away from *that* than we are autodriving cars where you still have to pay attention.
The car you describe, I could put my kids into and it would take them to school, without my even being there. I think we're more than a few years away from THAT. :)
But they are not intended to allow flight in close formation
Actually, you might be surprised, there are such autopilots... First, the autopilot on most modern airliners can do a Cat III autoland in zero/zero conditions. You don't touch the controls until you're doing a go around. The autopilot controls the airplane all the way to landing and roll out, usually to below 80 kts, then you can take over.
The Navy's airplanes have autoland to the carriers, which is even harder than to a fixed airport (since the runway is moving in three dimensions).
And finally, some Air Force autopilots have master/slave modes, you can link them to fly in formation long distances together. The master has the plan and the slaves simply hold position on the master.
And they will quite happily fly you into the ground when they fail. Or fly you to the point you stall and then fall to the ground.
Some will, others will not. The example in the small airplane with the Garmin G1000 will because it lacks FADEC and autothrottles. An Airbus A320 won't let you do that, it will prevent you from pitching over 33 degrees up or down and rolling more than 67 degrees left or right. It will also prevent a stall by overriding your throttle setting and applying more power, then lowering the nose if you continue to try to pull back the stick and full throttle has been reached.
You can manually override that in an emergency (that was added after the Paris Airshow crash many years ago of the A300, that was pretty stupid on the pilot's part) so that you can roll it upside down if you really need to, but normally the plane won't let you do that.
As for flying into the ground, modern airliners won't let you do that anymore either, besides having GPWS (ground proxomity warning system) among other things, the new ones will override the controls and avoid a collision with the ground unless in landing mode and facing an airport. Check out the G550 and G650 some time, they have amazing computer systems in the cockpit, including FLIR and CCIP, along with verbal callouts.
http://youtu.be/lJIvsI9AtIs
This one is a Gulfstream G450 landing at Aspen
http://youtu.be/DR9lyAM2YNE
This one shows taxing on the ground and other shots of the enhanced vision system.
If you watch the first one, you'll see a small circle with a line coming out of the sides and top, that is the CCIP (continuously computed impact point), that shows where the airplane will go if you do nothing else, so long as it is on the end of the runway, that is where you'll end up. If it is showing lower or off to the side or in the trees, you better do something else.
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Side note: Yes, I'm aware that at the end, you pointed out that the autopilot in a C172 and a G1000 is not a great example because that system is stupid. Yes it is, because of the cost of development in small airplane aviation is just sad and behind the times, that is what you get. Because of the large number of cars built, billions can be spend on development, I would expect anything put out by Ford, Nissan, etc. would have the type of autodrive that a Gulfstream or Airbus has...
