I've always wondered about why manual transmissions generally get better mileage than automatics. The answer is surprisingly simple: humans are better shifters.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency's fuel economy ratings, cars with manual transmissions typically beat their automatic peers by a mile or two per gallon. This is largely because manuals give you more control over an engine's exertions. Despite recent advances in slushbox design, humans are still better than automated systems at recognizing precisely when to shift gears. And smart shifting enables you to limit an engine's rotations per minute, which translates into less fuel consumption.
But here's my question: Why isn't there a computer that can shift better than a human? What's the unique cognitive talent behind gear shifting that a computer can't master? It seems to me like designing a "smarter" transmission would be a fairly easy task. If we can design a computer program that can beat a grandmaster at chess, or diagnose a heart attack better than a cardiologist, then why can't we build a transmission that knows when to go from second to third gear?
Environment
Comments (14)
I had a similar question some years ago (in 2000) when I was overseeing a seismometer at a field site. It was an old-school one which still had the drum paper output as well as a digitial version of the data. Part of my job was to change the paper every day and go over the record with a pencil marking the earthquakes. I would then go in and correct/adjust/add to the digital record of the quakes. There was software, honed for years by scientists at the USGS, to detect quakes, but somehow they were never able to quite capture what the human eye/brain can do without even thinking (I spent perhaps 5 minutes looking over a 24 hour record).
Posted by: Andrea Grant | October 30, 2007 10:22 AM