poorjohn, it helps me, and has been an aid in better understanding what I have learned from some superb PPrune commentary on the Hudson River landing, this lost flight, and other mishap discussions. The explanation of normal law, degraded modes and Alt Law, and the sorts of decisions IF/THEN rules result in -- actions by the software/hardware package (robot
) -- makes the state of the art autopilot a hell of a lot more complex than the old George who'd keep airspeed and altitude for you at cruise conditions.
The good thing about robots, so far, is that you can know what programming parameters are, and limits, as robots built to date tend to be rule-driven machines. But you do have to know in order to get the most out of it, and not expect more out of it than it can deliver ... like most machines.
FWIW, I understand that learning machines with AI that is beyond simple rule structure have been in development for some time, but am not current enough on that matter to comment further.