Automation and autonomous driving

22/05/2016 by Christian Kram | Filed in testing | Comments Off on Automation and autonomous driving

Patrick Prill published a blog post last month that caused quite a stir, and rightfully so. If you haven’t read it yet, I strongly recommend that you do it now. As part of my personal #CommentChallenge I tried to answer some questions Patrick proposed. Doing that made me think a bit more about the topic of automation and examples. First of all, I can’t stress enough that automation per se is not a silver bullet and will not solve all your problems. It might be a useful tool, though, and assist your testing.

I have spent my last few years in the automotive sector and when thinking of examples, I often stay in that realm. Test automation for me resembles autonomous driving quite a bit. Autonomous driving is about cars driving on their own. It’s still in development, but certain motorways in Germany are open for autonomous test driving by now. But let me ask you some questions:

  • Do you have to tell the car where to go?
  • Do you have to put your luggage into the car on your own?
  • Do you have to gas up (or better yet: charge your car)?

If you are a bit like me, these are obvious no-brainers and the answers are yes (no, I don’t have a butler…).

Now let me ask you some more questions?

  • Have you ever driven to the wrong destination because you put a wrong destination in the sat nav?
  • Do you sometimes know better than sat nav because of experience?
  • Did the safety belt alarm ever go off because you put your hand on the passenger seat?
  • Have you ever got fined for speeding because the speed indicator showed a wrong speed?
  • Have you ever driven into a river because the car mistook the ferry for a bridge?

I would answer yes to these, except to the last one, but it happened recently. Cars may ask “where do you want to go?”, but ultimately that is a decision and that is something the car can’t take over from you. And it probably won’t let you take the scenic road because of the view. Autonomous driving is a tool and a very intriguing one. Yet it is still you who is in the driver’s seat, so make the best of your journey.

And while writing on this post, I came across this on twitter:


So, maybe there is something to that thought 😉