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USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

arstechnica.co.uk

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Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#321

Post by marcosdumay »

Zeebrommer wrote: post #286
wruza wrote: post #277

Maybe I’m too late or too simplistic, but why do ships and aircrafts have so complex control systems in normal functioning modes at all? Why can’t layman ship commander like me just tell the system to be “there” in specific time via hand-drawn or standard route? If my engines malfunctioning, or steering lost it is one thing, but if everything is okay, can’t a simple swipe-to-sail iphone app just coordinate all ship c…

Although I think ship control can definitely be made more user-friendly, what you are asking for is of similar complexity as a self-driving car.

Looks more like an aircraft's auto-pilot. It's not something that would look for obstacles, read signs, or take any kind of input from the environment besides current position.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#322

Post by lisper »

thomasz wrote: post #203
scott_karana wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air France 477 was caused by UI stupidity, too. Linked controls (nobody realized the junior copilot was making opposing inputs, which were then averaged with the pilot's) plus poor autopilot UI that they were accustomed to ignoring, made it stall and crash after a single wind speed sensor iced up. If nobody had touched the controls, autopilot would have flown safely through the storm. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

That's a very simplistic interpretation. The article is really worth a read. The whole accident is a prime example for a very minor problem (loosing air speed indicators) spinning completely out of control, with the crew being making every possible mistake all the way down, all three people in the cockpit completely ignoring 47 stall warnings.

Losing airspeed indicators can be a minor problem, but not in a jet at altitude at night, which was the case for AF477. You can fly a small plane without an ASI, particular in visual conditions, because the margin for error is large and you have other visual and auditory cues to tell you whether you're in the ballpark. But Jets at altitude fly in a very narrow envelope between stalling and over-stressing the airframe (look up "coffin corner"), and in instrument conditions you have no way to tell whether you're in the zone or not. Furthermore, without reliable airpseed, the autopilot stops working properly. AF477 was not just a case of the crew being stupid or bad UI. It really was a very serious situation aerodynamically.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#323

Post by lisper »

IshKebab wrote: post #239
lisper wrote: post #106

It's not just boats that have safety-critical UI design problems. The avionics in airplanes are becoming so complicated that managing the avionics is almost more difficult than flying the plane. I'm a private pilot who has been flying a Cirrus SR22 for twelve years. In that time it has gone through two major glass cockpit avionics revisions. In the first revision, called the Avidyne, the autopilot was either on or of…

Wow that UI is truly terrible. It's like they said "we need all this information on the screen" and then just dumped it anywhere. Who knew Microsoft Flight Simulator 2.0 was so accurate?

MSFS is amazing. So is X-plane. The latter has aerodynamic models accurate enough to simulate flight on other planets!

https://what-if.xkcd.com/30/

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#324

Post by lisper »

wmeredith wrote: post #307
lisper wrote: post #106

It's not just boats that have safety-critical UI design problems. The avionics in airplanes are becoming so complicated that managing the avionics is almost more difficult than flying the plane. I'm a private pilot who has been flying a Cirrus SR22 for twelve years. In that time it has gone through two major glass cockpit avionics revisions. In the first revision, called the Avidyne, the autopilot was either on or of…

"managing the avionics is almost more difficult than flying the plane" The same goes for modern cars. The electronics is a nightmare. HVAC controls locked away behind touch screens menus. It's awful.

Oh, so much this! The whole UI world seems to have jumped the shark about 2-3 years ago. I dread the day when my current car (a 2012 model) dies because everything on the market today sucks UI beans. (Actually, the same goes for phones and laptops too. I have an iPhone 4S running a jailbroken iOS 7 and a late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina running Mavericks, both of which I am going to hang on to until either they or I die.)

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#325

Post by dredmorbius »

gsnedders wrote: post #243
inferiorhuman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue it's more like getting dropped into single user mode. No friendly GUI, but the underlying systems are the same. The flaw with any sort of safety net is that you get used to it and forget the basics of aviation. The big problem was that the pilot-in-command simply forgot (or did not know) how to fly the plane. He overcorrected in reaction to turbulence and the rest is history. Normal law does not allow the p…

> The big problem was that the pilot-in-command simply forgot (or did not know) how to fly the plane. The pilot flying wasn't the pilot-in-command. Half the problem was the PIC was out of the cockpit at the time and the lack of any clear command structure between the two first officers in the cockpit. You can also argue that it may have been recoverable if the PIC took over as PF when he returned to the cockpit (had…

"PIC", pilot in control, refers to the pilot actually flying the plane. Not the command or seniority structure amongst pilots.

There were a Captain and two co-pilots aboard AF445. The junior co-pilot was PIC for much of the incident.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#326

Post by dredmorbius »

isaacdl wrote: post #102
inferiorhuman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue it's more like getting dropped into single user mode. No friendly GUI, but the underlying systems are the same. The flaw with any sort of safety net is that you get used to it and forget the basics of aviation. The big problem was that the pilot-in-command simply forgot (or did not know) how to fly the plane. He overcorrected in reaction to turbulence and the rest is history. Normal law does not allow the p…

QF32 had 5 (!) rated pilots in the cockpit and managed to communicate and delegate effectively. That's truly an amazing accomplishment.

Right, I was thinking of making the same point.

The initially-designated co-pilot also was virtually fully occupied simply clearing alerts from the aircraft's control and diagnostics systems -- for about 45 minutes as I recall.

That's a near-deadly case of TMI, I suspect.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#327

Post by zentiggr »

saulrh wrote: post #306
zentiggr wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navy sub vet and almost licensed as a pilot: The small aircraft case - one mind, one set of hands, to reduce the feedback loop to fractions of a second overall. Things other than throttle/ailerons/elevators get timeshared in when all else is stable momentarily. Larger ship - water is never still, and any vessel's helm left untended results in drift, both in heading and real speed vs ordered. Depending on traffic and…

I understand that keeping on a desired course is not a simple task and requires prediction and understanding of the surrounding waters... But you can say the same thing about crosswinds and thermal layers and pockets of turbulence in the air over a runway, and autopilots land 747s every day. In a far more computationally intensive and less recoverable domain, with more complex system dynamics and controls even discou…

TL/DR: I have to boil this down to a gut feel, but I'd rather fly a known takeoff/landing profile at any airport, than take a n-thousand ton vessel through a port departure/arrival, simply because the overall situation in the air is so much simpler.

Entering/leaving any decent sized port that handles larger vessels is a much more intense collision avoidance situation than any airspace management situation I can imagine.

Reducing the reaction space from three to two dimensions and extending the reaction time from control input -> output by a factor of 100 to 1000 is part of it.

The other complication is having a magnitude or more of different classes of "threats", from unexpected solid objects ( chart errors or new items unreported), other vessels both larger and smaller with faster or slower response times of their own, errors in SA... eyes and professional judgment help immensely. Thus the focus on keeping the OOD watching the whole SA.

My sub had at least a dozen people involved in building the "picture" around the boat, visual, sonar, radar... plus two or three of us collating that into displays and reports the OOD could see immediately.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#328

Post by mrguyorama »

chrisbennet wrote: post #259
katastic wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User interfaces have gone backwards decades in quality. Look at your car radio in a 90's car. You didn't need to look at it to figure out how to push the radio button, turn the volume, anything. You could even adjust the bass on the fly with a bass knob instead of navigating to your "eq" menu to do it. Now, you've got to look away from the road, realize what "mode" your in, you can move the menu around to the "audio"…

Microwave oven UI's are terrible but they weren't always that way. My old Amana had 5 controls: a knob for intensity (never changed it) and a knob for the timer, plus start, stop and light buttons. When the the start button broke we just jammed it in the "on" position with a penny making the UI even simpler: put the food in, and turn the knob for the time. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Cookmatic-Radarange-Made-by.…

I don't have the same feeling. Different brands have different UI's, and some are as simple as "Press then numbered button for how many minutes of full power cooking you want"

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#329

Post by lisper »

FabHK wrote: post #189
rangibaby wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a purpose to the display being so colorful? If AP were the only green thing and the others were monochrome it would stand out more.

While the "AP" indicator is very important, such that overlooking it, or rather missing its absence, could lead to loss of control and death, the same holds for many other of the items displayed.

> the same holds for many other of the items displayed

Like what? I really can't think of anything that has the same ratio of danger to visual subtlety.

Re: USS McCain collision ultimately caused by UI confusion

#330

Post by krschultz »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #273
zwily wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heat from the nuclear reaction in a nuclear power plant is typically just used to boil water, which turns turbines, which creates the electricity.

Does this electricity charge a battery pack, which then is used to drive the electric motors which turn the screws? This would imply that the heat generation and turbine spin-up time merely need to respond before the batteries are discharged, potentially allowing response times of minutes or hours. It would give Tesla-like instant throttle response, where the operator would move the lever and the sub would jump forwa…

Your entire comment is wrong, and toomanybeersies is right.

Source: https://www.defensetech.org/2013/09/27/ohio-class-subs-to-sh...

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