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Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

autocar.co.uk

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Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#671

Post by averros »

CivBase wrote: post #162
hnarn wrote: post #138

Look at the cockpit of any modern airliner and you will see screens, but they are never interactive. There are hardware buttons, dials and lights all over the place. A tactile interface is both more obvious, sturdy and more stable, and therefore safer. The problem that touch interfaces solve, ever since the advent of the first smart phone, is that the interface is now dynamic. You can change it without having to repl…

I work for an avionics manufacturer and I can assure you most of our upcoming comercial systems (and even a healthy portion of government ones) feature touch screen inputs.

Try to punch stuff into touch screen when a/c is bouncing around in moderate chop. Then you really wish for hardware buttons and something to rest your fingers on like a bezel.

The trend towards touchscreens on avionics is idiotic - apparently no actual pilots were asked for their opinion.

(And, yes, I'm an instrument-rated pilot).

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#672

Post by averros »

nettdata wrote: post #650
omegant wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of them, as you find turbulence in all fases during the flight.

Roll? Pitch? Yaw? Engine RPM? Prop pitch? Those are “most” of the controls... none of which require touchscreens. What controls are you referring to specifically?

Radios and navaid settings. Flight plan. Selected approach.

When you're flying on instruments you're twisting knobs and pushing buttons rather frequently.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#673

Post by cesarb »

fleetingmoments wrote: post #661
shripadk wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if an object impacts a touchscreen and it breaks? I have my screens break (even behind a screen protector) and has failed to respond to touch. Imagine you are flying a plane and the touchscreen breaks due to impact. All your inputs are centralized behind that one touchscreen and you can no longer operate it. Wouldn't it be then better if there were multiple points of failure? You are decentralizing the i…

Have a spare screen that you can just slot in and carry on.

The airplane cockpits I've read about have multiple screens, with knobs selecting the function of each screen (and which of the redundant flight computers control each screen), so a failed screen can be replaced by selecting its function on another screen. This makes more sense (and is simpler) than carrying a replacement screen (which would be dead weight most of the time) and designing a hot-swap mechanism (which would be yet another potential point of failure).

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#674

Post by dkersten »

crististm wrote: post #658
travisgriggs wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've done a lot of programming for hardware switches and such then? I do some. And the last device we built, we still fight with a simple rotary switch. You have to do things like debounce inputs that seem like obvious binary switches. Getting the debounce windowing right can be just as "guessy". And guess what the highest point of failure on said device is. That selector switch. Had similar experience with buttons…

Are you debouncing on tactile or is the hardware doing it for you?

In my own brief stint in (non-critical) hardware development, all debouncing was done manually in software.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#675

Post by dkersten »

TylerE wrote: post #622
6nf wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean ... we all know a car does not need that much code

Really, why do you know that? I would expect a car to have tons of code. Think of all the functions... Engine management, Engine monitoring, Powertrain control, Emissions, Diagnostics, Infotainment, Satnav, Climate Control, Traction Control, ABS, Anti-collision radar, Cruise control, Lane keeping, Backup camera, Parking sensors... Now keep in mind that these hundreds of components exist in many many possible configur…

Perhaps because cars ran just fine (albeit with fewer features) for a long time with zero lines of code.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#676

Post by dkersten »

mattmanser wrote: post #581
twomoretime wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about minimizing points of failure, it's about removing singular points of failure. Perhaps "redundant" was the wrong word but the point is instead of having a single UI component (touchscreen/UI thread) which can cause the whole system to fail, if you group buttons/knobs into individual microservices they are unlikely to all go down simultaneously.

I don't get how we can explain it in a simpler way? If you add a microservice, you're adding another point of failure. You add another interaction, you add more code. Add more code, you add more bugs. It's pretty much the only empirical thing we have in software engineering, more code = more bugs. Lots of little microservices means lots of extra code means lots of extra bugs. Plus you've got to manage how they all in…

If you add one microservice, you add a point if failure, but if you then add a few redundant copies of that microservice, for failover, then you don’t add a point of failure.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#677

Post by dkersten »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #617
twomoretime wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about minimizing points of failure, it's about removing singular points of failure. Perhaps "redundant" was the wrong word but the point is instead of having a single UI component (touchscreen/UI thread) which can cause the whole system to fail, if you group buttons/knobs into individual microservices they are unlikely to all go down simultaneously.

So… You're suggesting reducing the impact of potential error… By increasing the surface area of potential error…?!

It depends on the error. If its a logic error that will deterministically break all instances, then sure. If, on the other hand, its a transient error that a backup copy of the service can avoid, then redundancy adds safety. Sometimes safety critical software has multiple redundant units which need to agree, too, for example.

Re: Honda bucks industry trend by removing touchscreen controls

#680

Post by stevehawk »

t0mas88 wrote: post #663
Wistar wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This past January, I rented an Audi Q7. It was brand new and had the Audi Virtual Cockpit which took me a full two days to grasp to the point where I could use it safely and required me to pull over several times to figure something out. Worse, the rental agency had removed the owner's manuals so I was without reference. One of the goofiest things was that the navigation moving map would mysteriously stop moving--all…

That keys-with-steel-cable thing car rental companies do is terrible. And there is absolutely no point in doing so. Either give me two separate keys so two drivers can use them, or just give me one key.

The honest truth to why they do it is because they don't want to be in a situation where they're shipping keys around between locations (or even pretending to inventory/store them) because people keep forgetting to bring back both or lose one and the other one is in an office in another state. You're far less likely to lose both keys than just one because of how obnoxious it is. And having 2 keys is actually a reasonable increase in re-sale/auction value because of how expensive/difficult it is to re-key cars these days (unless you're a criminal then it's really easy and cheap apparently).
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