Automation seems to go through three stages of maturity. At stage one, we identify something as being a real pain, cumbersome, a hassle, error-prone. In response, we decide to throw technology at it (stage two) but often too much technology; so the result is inflexible and unsophisticated. Stage three brings enlightenment; we scale back technology but still take pain out of the job without relinquishing control to the dreaded automaton.
These three stages appear in the refinement of vehicle gearing systems. Manual gearboxes are cumbersome and a pain in traffic (stage #1). Automatic gearboxes take all the pain away but also take away the control (stage #2) – it’s a bit rubbish if the car kicks down on the motorway when all you want to do is slowly accelerate. The next shift (excuse the pun) in transmission systems (sensonic, steptronic, tiptronic) allows drivers to decide when to change gears but removes the whole clutch nonsense. Great for Lewis and his F1 buddies but do we really need all that paddle activity? We thought we’d reached stage #3 but in reality, we’re back at stage #1. Today, I think we’ve got the balance right, true stage #3. The car decides when to change gears (no clutch, no paddles) but we can shift down or shift up if we want to do something particular. When the car senses that we’ve finished “active driving”, it quietly assumes control of the gearing decisions again. Automation has taken away the tiresome bits but we can assume the right level of control when we want.
The official report of flight AF447, lost en route from Rio to Paris, illustrates another pitfall. I will tread carefully here given the tragic loss of life and I will be clear that I cannot summarise in a few lines what aviation experts needed over 224 pages to capture. The report concluded that the accident resulted from a…
“Temporary inconsistency between the measured airspeeds, likely following the obstruction of the Pitot probes by ice crystals that led in particular to autopilot disconnection and a reconfiguration to alternate law.”
… followed by a number of incorrect pilot actions. Alternate Law refers to the situation where fly-by-wire Airbus craft reconfigure to remove the normal protections that prevent pilots from performing actions that would endanger the craft.
Pilots are trained to safely fly their craft during Normal Law and Alternate Law. In the 4 minutes and 23 seconds between autopilot disconnect and impact, the three flight crew had to assimilate conflicting information provided by flight information systems, assume control and handle the emergency with a craft that was responding in an atypical (but trained for) manner. One could compare this to one’s taxi driver saying “Don’t know why the car is accelerating and the steering isn’t working properly, you drive… and don’t hit that wall that we’re fast approaching.”
Our lesson here concerns the ability of humans to effectively take control. With my new paddle shift gearbox, the situation is one in which I decide when to take control having been steering, accelerating and actively sensing road conditions. If I’ve been completely disengaged from driving and the vehicle forces me to take control, my ability to do so safely may be limited.
So; what is Just Enough Automation when the challenge is autonomous vehicles?