Autonomous flying vehicles = safer than cars?
From the archive: written before or outside the Architect Tomorrow newsletter, so it may be out of date.
On first glance the title of this article seems counter intuitive but bear with me for 2 minutes…
Only having a 2 dimensional option space for an autonomous vehicle to operate in is massively limiting.
In some cases this will lead to the classic - do you risk killing the occupants or definitely kill another road user - type scenario as played out in the MoralMachine test by MIT
Consider that an autonomous vehicle will have limited intelligence. It will be weak AI - complex algorithms crunching sensor data at high frequency to determine its next course of action. Rather than a human level of intelligence (which can apply empathy - or selfishness in a crisis) we should look to the animal (or insect) kingdom.
Compare a herd of wildebeest with a swarm of birds:
The swarm of birds has far more options in direction of movement in order to avoid each other. Herd animals frequently bump into each other and stampede over other animals. The flock of birds fly over or around obstacles and are far more agile.
They can dive or climb in addition to swerving left or right (or combinations of the 2) and are not further confined by the tracks on the ground. Looking again at the Moral Machine test - the problem is unlikely to be binary anymore. Although I do accept that the degree of complexity has probably just gone up an order of magnitude! But hey you just throw more computing power at it!
Flight already has degrees of autonomy
Effectively autonomous flight already exists - consider fly by wire autopilot systems and ILS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system) technology has been around for many years and is proven. Also in flight Radar is a highly effective, tried and tested means of obstacle detection and avoidance. LIDAR, Sonar, Machine Vision and other car based sensor techniques are far newer by comparison.
Handling different types of driver is easier if you create air corridors for different vehicle types?
Consider also that autonomous cars are likely to have to operate in a mixed driver environments. By this I mean that for many years some vehicles will be driven by humans, some in a semi-automatic mode (adaptive cruise control, Tesla Autopilot), and some fully autonomous. Is this less of an issue in the sky where vehicles have more space to operate and avoid each other?
But I am sure there are other risks associated with flight as opposed to ground travel that I have overlooked? Let me know in the comments!
If you liked this - you might like some of my earlier futurist style posts.
Originally published on LinkedIn. Comments and discussion live there.