Hal wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Troy Guffey
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 7:14 AM
To: The GURPSnet mailing list
Subject: [gurps] Failing autopilots and RVO
-------------------------------------------------
From: "Knapp" <[email protected]>
In what way is a routine operation different from an emergency one?
Plane companies have records of what goes wrong and how often. They
can program for this just as well as anything else. On top
of that the
computer can react faster and will never make a mistake with good
programming. Also the computer might have data that a pilot
could lot
get quickly enough in an emergency like air pressure over the wing,
material stresses and other subtle factors of flight. Did
you look at
just how much ground info that robot spy plane can gather?
I am sure
it could be programmed to use that for a very nice ditching. This
plane could take off, fly, land and taxi 10 years ago!
Even if an autopilot *has* been programmed to respond to all
previous emergencies, vehicles will still find new ways to go
wrong that require genuine *creativity* to handle. There is
no possible way to program *every* possible emergency.
obGURPS: Does the Routine Vehicle Operation program include
things like "if both wings are blown off and the fuel is on
fire, and the megaton nuke missile armed but failed to release"? :-)
One way of looking at this is simply this...
If the robotic's program value is listed as being a 17, it is programmed to
handle just about everything that is possible - except the truly unexpected.
When rolling to see if one's "skill is up to the task", one is really saying
that the circumstances involved at that precise moment are either within
parameters of the programmer's abilities, or the circumstances are outside
of what the programmers provided.
Thus, a skill 16 program will generally handle 98.1% of the problems that
may arise. It just happens that the remaining 1.9% of the times, the
program just can't handle anything that was envisioned by the programmers -
and the "in case of event not being covered, try best likely course of
action" just can't handle it.
It appears that most of the programs in GURPS 4e tend to cluster around the
skill value of 12 or so - which means that ths software tends to be able to
handle roughly 74% of the situations. When you roll dice against the
computer's skill - you're essentially asking "Are the problems involved
inside, or outside the programs parameters". When you roll a 13+, the
answer is "Yes, the problem lies outside the program's parameters". When
you roll a 17 or 18, you're saying in effect "this is outside of the
programmer's expertise or, the program itself contained a bug in it that did
not execute the intent of the programmers, but followed the wrong track"
Just one way of looking at it. ;)
And as I recall, "routine duties" get a +4 to skill. So that skill 12
airline autopilot program will hardly ever have a problem as long as
nothing unexpected happens.
The program running a fighter or bomber in "hard" ground-follow at 150
feet and 500 mph had better have at least skill 16. :)
I don't know if that's a "routine" task for a fighter autopilot or not.
In my opinion, it's a trivial problem for a computer, **assuming** its
terrain database, inertial or GPS locater and/or its radar is reporting
accurate information.
When things go wrong is when it gets non-routine of course. If the
radar reports an obstacle but the location on the map shows nothing,
trust it or not? It might be a jamming artifact, or the map might be
wrong, but the computer has only a quarter second to decide.
One other thing about computer software that might come into play is
that it is predictable. This shows up in real life, in the tactics game
players adopt to defeat boss enemies in MMOs, for example. It shows up
in science fiction often as well. An example of that is in Michael Z.
Williamson's "Freehold" novel, the Freehold military uses their
knowledge about the autopilot of a UN Guardian fighter to force it into
a known evasion tactic, which is when the *second* SAM hits it. I
believe I also remember it in one of the "Bolo" novels, where a more
advanced Bolo successfully predicts the responses of an older model Bolo
in order to take it down.
In GURPS terms, I could see that as a skill bonus against a particular
known version of computer software. A Transhuman Space AI running
ground defenses vs. attack drones should be able to get at least a +4 if
it has had a chance to reverse engineer their attack program. A human
could do as well of course, but it would take a lot longer.
--
Zan Lynx
[email protected]
"Knowledge is Power. Power Corrupts. Study Hard. Be Evil."
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