9.20.2005

 

More human error

When I speak publicly about robots, one question that I get asked all the time is, "What makes you think that people would fly on airplanes or trains where the is no human in the cockpit?" I think people will actually be happy to get into robotic airplanes because they will be safer. Here is an example.

NTSB: Derailed train was going too fast: "A commuter train was going almost 60 mph faster than the speed limit just before it derailed, killing two people and injuring dozens, the acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday.

Mark Rosenker said the Metra train was traveling at 69 mph and should not have been going faster than 10 mph when it switched tracks at a crossover just before jumping the tracks Saturday.

'Sixty-nine miles an hour is very, very fast when you're dealing with a 10-mile-an-hour restriction,' Rosenker said.

The speed information came from a preliminary reading of one of the train's three electronic data recorders, popularly known as 'black boxes,' Rosenker said.
Part of the investigation included an interview Sunday with the train's engineer. The 41-year-old man had been on the job for 45 days after completing Metra's six-month training program, which included at least some training along the route where the derailment occurred. He also had worked for more than five years as a CSX Corp. freight train engineer."

Comments:
Robots, or any computing machinery is programmed by humans or even if such instructions are the result of automation, there still is the human element orchestrating the effort from the top…
 
Yeah, but I imagine when the first-generation of automated cars are introduced to the general public, the percentage of deaths from buggy car software will be magnitudes less than the number of deaths previously from things like people falling asleep at the wheel, or drunk driving. Driving of any sort is one area where robots/software will always trump their human counterparts, hands down.
 
I remember observing with amusement, when I was very young, much older people hesitant or unwilling to enter/use the new 'push button' elevators. They were accustomed to the 'expert' human elevator operator -- and possibly amused by the common inability of such operator to properly align the elevator car threshold with the targeted floor (I'd observed discrepancies of up to four inches). -- blzbob
 
I live in London, England where we have a robotic railway for a few years, its called "The Docklands Light railway" or DLR for short. It smoother and more reliable than its human driven countapart.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/dlr/about/
 
B..b..but Marshall... you make it sound as if this is a BAD thing. Humans must move over and give the new kid robots a chance!
 
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