First Tesla did it for cars, now it's being done for ships

[Undried Plum]

https://electrek.co/2021/08/25/worlds-f ... w-onboard/

It's the way of the future, just as steam once was.

OK, so the name of the Company used to be Norsk Hydro, so they may be biased, but I'm sure they're right that electric power is the way ahead.

[PHXPhlyer]

Look at all the money they'll save on lifeboats.

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

First picture shows bridge with windows.
Does the robo-helmsman need them to see out?
Second picture, no bridge.

Is it going to be controlled by SkyNet?
How will it deal with pirates?
I need to know.

PP

[llondel]

First picture shows bridge with windows.
Does the robo-helmsman need them to see out?
Second picture, no bridge.

Is it going to be controlled by SkyNet?
How will it deal with pirates?
I need to know.

PP

If it's got no one on board and is under remote control, it would presumably deal with pirates by continuing on to its destination because they wouldn't be able to do anything except perhaps sink it.

[PHXPhlyer]

Did't delve into the inner workings.
I assumed from UP's headline that it was equivalent to a Tesla's self-driving capabilities, not remote control.

PP

[Pontius Navigator]

The bridge looks as if it might have been a bolt on during trials. Autonomous looks great in theory but who catches mooring lines?
Who does running maintenance? Ships don't paint themselves; they don't clean themselves. Lots of maintenance is done underway not shore side.
It could work well with day running such as a ferry, or a regular supply run, but how do you manage with awkward harbours?

What might be possible is crew it as you do with a pilot. Disembark a harbour crew once it has left port. Board it with a new crew at destination.

[Undried Plum]

The Kongsberg autopilot works in a very similar way to that of Tesla cars. It too has instant manual override.

My first question is: how the hell did they get this thing past the Seaman's Union? Bribery? Perhaps offering to pay the Union Dues of the non-existent crews?

This particular ship is designed for a couple of regular rat-runs, so it was quite easy to build the necessary infrastructure.

As for mooring: she's a full DP vessel so she can hold herself alongside the wall without mooring ropes for as long as is takes to do the turnaround. Many ferries in Norway, including the manned electric ones, don't tie up when discharging/loading, so it's not that different in that respect. The electric ferries automatically hook up to the shoreside chargers, so no need for manual intervention unless something goes wrong.

I also wonder how they get around the firefighting regulations. Replacing fire-trained crewmen with sprinklers doesn't sound very comprehensive to me.

The Insurance bunfight when the first collision occurs will spectacular, especially if it's a collision between two of these things.

As for piracy, there's not much of that nowadays along the Southern coast of Norway. Terrorist attack is a remote possibility, I'd guess, but there's not much of that along the Skagerrak either.

I presume the contingency for GPS failure is a combination of DR plus radar map-reading, but I haven't seen the nittygritty details.

[Pontius Navigator]

I imagine that like aircraft there will be set weather criteria.

[llondel]

The Insurance bunfight when the first collision occurs will spectacular, especially if it's a collision between two of these things.

We could re-write the joke about the US aircraft carrier and the lighthouse.

[Undried Plum]

The Insurance bunfight when the first collision occurs will spectacular, especially if it's a collision between two of these things.

We could re-write the joke about the US aircraft carrier and the lighthouse.

That's a subject of allision.

I was talking about a collision.

Different thing.

Massively different in terms of Marine Insurance, I can tell ye!

In a collision, it is always a a matter of blame apportionment between the two Masters in an Admiralty Court bunfight. It is never 'one or the other'.

[PHXPhlyer]

allision

New word for vocabulary.
Thanks UP

PP

[TheGreenGoblin]

The Insurance bunfight when the first collision occurs will spectacular, especially if it's a collision between two of these things.

You leave Alison out of this maritime matter, lest we find ourselves all sea in an unstoppable object about to hit an immovable force!

Allision is a great legal term, you sea lawyer you, PN.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Woke up this morning feeling really tired, having woken up earlier at about 14:00 hrs and having only got back to sleep about 2 hours ago. Was going to go and commit some aviation today , with the idea of a bimble down to the Battle Of Britain Memorial and then along the coast. Low cloud and IFR conditions here at the moment which should clear but then might not along the coast, and for the second time this week " I can't be arsed with something" what with all the faffing around, and waiting around to see what happens, weatherwise in this case. I am going to can the idea and give the weekend over to doing absolutely nothing.

AF EGSS 280500Z 2806/2912 01008KT 2000 BR BKN002
TEMPO 2806/2807 0300 FG BKN001
BECMG 2807/2809 9999 NSW SCT006
PROB40 TEMPO 2901/2908 2000 BR BKN002

[Pontius Navigator]

A right sleeping beaut eh!, sleeping till mid afternoon

[Undried Plum]

Duly nominated for Thread Drift Prize of the month year.

Thinking further, I guess they also had to bribe the lorry drivers Union. That ship will cut out thousands of road-borne container lorry trips.

Norway is very socialistic, which is why wages are so high and why taxation can afford to be so high, and in turn, why the standard of living is so high and why the quality of life is so high.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Woke up this morning feeling really tired, having woken up earlier at about 14:00 hrs and having only got back to sleep about 2 hours ago. Was going to go and commit some aviation today , with the idea of a bimble down to the Battle Of Britain Memorial and then along the coast. Low cloud and IFR conditions here at the moment which should clear but then might not along the coast, and for the second time this week " I can't be arsed with something" what with all the faffing around, and waiting around to see what happens, weatherwise in this case. I am going to can the idea and give the weekend over to doing absolutely nothing.

AF EGSS 280500Z 2806/2912 01008KT 2000 BR BKN002
TEMPO 2806/2807 0300 FG BKN001
BECMG 2807/2809 9999 NSW SCT006
PROB40 TEMPO 2901/2908 2000 BR BKN002

I am clearly tired. This post was meant for TRABB!

Please accept my deepest apologies PN.

I am clearly asleep at the wheel what with 14:00 hrs before the mast...

[Rwy in Sight]

Woke up this morning feeling really tired, having woken up earlier at about 14:00 hrs and having only got back to sleep about 2 hours ago. Was going to go and commit some aviation today , with the idea of a bimble down to the Battle Of Britain Memorial and then along the coast. Low cloud and IFR conditions here at the moment which should clear but then might not along the coast, and for the second time this week " I can't be arsed with something" what with all the faffing around, and waiting around to see what happens, weatherwise in this case. I am going to can the idea and give the weekend over to doing absolutely nothing.

AF EGSS 280500Z 2806/2912 01008KT 2000 BR BKN002
TEMPO 2806/2807 0300 FG BKN001
BECMG 2807/2809 9999 NSW SCT006
PROB40 TEMPO 2901/2908 2000 BR BKN002

I am clearly tired. This post was meant for TRABB!

Please accept my deepest apologies PN.

I am clearly asleep at the wheel what with 14:00 hrs before the mast...

Now you need to post something in the TRABB regarding this thread to balance it out

[TheGreenGoblin]

Now you need to post something in the TRABB regarding this thread to balance it out

Any lunacy is possible RiS!

[PHXPhlyer]

At least the ship won't be able to hit emergency vehicles unless they are on a ferry.

Another Tesla reportedly using Autopilot hits a parked police car

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/30/business ... index.html

New York (CNN Business)Another Tesla has hit an emergency vehicle, apparently while using the Autopilot driver-assist feature, adding to a problem that is already the subject of a federal safety probe.

The Florida Highway Patrol reported the accident just before 5 in the morning Saturday along Interstate 4 in Orlando. No one was seriously injured in the crash, though the Tesla did narrowly miss hitting a state trooper as he left his car to assist another driver who had broken down on the highway.
The broken-down car was a Mercedes that had come to a stop in a travel lane. The police cruiser was stopped behind it with its emergency lights flashing. The left front of the Tesla Model 3 crashed into the side of the police car, and then hit the Mercedes.
"The driver stated that [the Tesla] was in Autopilot mode," said the report from the Florida Highway Patrol.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration disclosed earlier this month that it is investigating at least 11 accidents involving Teslas that have hit police cars, ambulances or other emergency vehicles while they were responding to traffic accidents. The crashes under investigation occurred between January 22, 2018, and July 10, 2021, across nine states. They took place mostly at night, and the accident response scenes were all outfitted with control measures such as emergency vehicle lights, flares, illuminated arrow boards and road cones, according to NHTSA.
Florida police said they would report the crash to the NHTSA and to Tesla.

The highway safety agency said that it is important that Tesla owners using Autopilot remain alert and ready to take control of the car in order to avoid obstacles.
"NHTSA reminds the public that no commercially available motor vehicles today are capable of driving themselves," the agency said in a statement. "Every available vehicle requires a human driver to be in control at all times, and all state laws hold human drivers responsible for operation of their vehicles."
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the latest crash or on the NHTSA investigation. Although the company says that its data show cars using Autopilot have fewer accidents per mile than cars being driven by humans, it does warn that "current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous."
In addition to the NHTSA probe, Senators Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Democrats who have been critical of Tesla in the past, have asked the Federal Trade Commission to launch an investigation into whether Tesla's use of the term "Autopilot" and its claims about the car's self-driving capabilities amount to misleading advertising. The FTC has not commented on whether it has launched the requested probe into Tesla's claims.
Driver-assist options such as Tesla's Autopilot or adaptive cruise control, which is available in a wide range of vehicles from various automakers, do a good job of slowing a car down when traffic ahead slows, said Sam Abuelsamid, an expert in self-driving vehicles and principal analyst at Guidehouse Insights.
But Abuelsamid said those vehicles are designed to ignore stationary objects when traveling at more than 40 mph so they don't slam on the brakes when approaching overpasses or other objects on the side of the road — such as a car stopped on the shoulder. Fortunately most of these automatic braking systems do stop for stationary objects when they are traveling at slower speeds.

The bigger problem, according to Abuelsamid, is that many more Tesla owners appear to assume their cars can, in fact, drive themselves than do drivers of other vehicles with automatic driver-assist features. Moreover, the cues that a driver would see when approaching an accident site, such as road flares or flashing lights, make more sense to a human than they might to an auto drive system.
"When it works, which can be most of the time, it can be very good," Abuelsamid said about Tesla's Autopilot feature. "But it can easily be confused by things that humans would have no problem with. Machine visions are not as adaptive as humans'. And the problem is that all machine systems sometimes make silly errors."


Tesla is under investigation because its cars keep hitting emergency vehicles

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/16/business ... index.html

New York (CNN Business)Federal safety regulators are investigating at least 11 accidents involving Tesla cars using Autopilot or other self-driving features that crashed into emergency vehicles when coming upon the scene of an earlier crash.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration said seven of these accidents resulted 17 injuries and one death.
All of the Teslas in question had the self-driving Autopilot feature or the traffic-aware cruise control engaged as they approached the crashes, the NHTSA said.
Tesla (TSLA) stock fell 5% in morning trading following news of the probe.
The accidents under investigation occurred between January 22, 2018, and July 10, 2021, across nine different states. They took place mostly at night, and the post-accident scenes all included control measures like first responder vehicle lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board and road cones.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the probe.

The safety of Tesla's Autopilot feature has been questioned before. The National Transportation Safety Board, a separate agency that also investigates plane crashes and other fatal accidents, found Autopilot partly to blame in a 2018 fatal crash in Florida that killed a Tesla driver.
Police in a Houston suburb said there was no one in the driver's seat of a Tesla that crashed and killed two people in the car earlier this year, a charge that Tesla has denied. But Lars Moravy, Tesla's vice president of vehicle engineering, confirmed in April in comments to investors that Tesla's adaptive cruise control was engaged and accelerated to 30 mph before that car crashed.
Tesla has been seeking to offer full self-driving technology to its drivers. But while it says that its data shows cars using Autopilot have fewer accidents per mile than cars being driven by drivers, it does warn "current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous."

The safety agency said its investigation will allow it to "better understand the causes of certain Tesla crashes," including "the technologies and methods used to monitor, assist, and enforce the driver's engagement with driving while Autopilot is in use." It will also look into any contributing factors in the crashes.
"NHTSA reminds the public that no commercially available motor vehicles today are capable of driving themselves," said the agency in a statement. "Every available vehicle requires a human driver to be in control at all times, and all state laws hold human drivers responsible for operation of their vehicles. Certain advanced driving assistance features can promote safety by helping drivers avoid crashes and mitigate the severity of crashes that occur, but as with all technologies and equipment on motor vehicles, drivers must use them correctly and responsibly."
The investigation involves the Tesla Y, X, S and 3 with model years 2014 to 2021.
Gordon Johnson, an analyst and vocal critic of Tesla, wrote in a note to clients Monday that the issue isn't just about Autopilot users — but also other non-Tesla drivers on the road who could be injured by cars using the feature.
"NHTSA is zeroing in on a particular danger that Tesla creates for people outside the vehicle — ie, those who never agreed to be Autopilot 'guinea pigs,'" Johnson wrote. "Thus, to simply say 'Tesla drivers accept Autopilot's risks,' as has been used in the past, does not appear to be a defense here."
Self-driving options such as Tesla's Autopilot or more widely available adaptive cruise control, available on a wide range of automakers' vehicles, do a good job of slowing a vehicle down when the car in front is slowing down, said Sam Abuelsamid, an expert in self-driving vehicles and principal analyst at Guidehouse Insights.
But Abuelsamid said those vehicles are designed to ignore stationary objects when traveling at more than 40 mph so they don't slam on the brakes when approaching overpasses or other stationary objects on the side of the road, such as a car stopped on the shoulder. Fortunately most of these vehicles with some kind of automatic braking do stop for stationary objects when they're moving more slowly, Abuelsamid said.

PP

[Undried Plum]

Where were the Tesla drivers in these dozen or so accidents which make worldwide news. Asleep at the wheel?

"vocal critic of Tesla". Yup. OK. Got that.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Reality, here's a vey ordinary humdrum day's driving for a Tesla owner in a Model 3 (the cheap one or the four models in the range).




Two years ago he made this little video about the Model 3:




Here's a second opinion: