I'm a mechanical engineer, not a systems engineer! All I know is that using limited sensors and flight conditions, you can command a gas turbine to do all sorts of things by telling the software what conditions are needed to do what.
In May 1991, Lauda Air flight 004 crashed near Bangkok due to the deployment of a thrust reverser in flight. The cause was a system sensor failure that allowed the control system to think that the conditions for deploying the reverser were OK. Boeing fitted modified parts and the control system was updated to include a signal that the undercarriage was seeing a load equivalent to the weight of the aircraft when it was on the ground. No additional sensors were needed, just the systems logic to take certain conditions as being present before the engine could command deployment of the thrust reverser.
It's just a question of sorting out what conditions are needed to auto-trim a car in flight.
As solid-state gyros are so easy to fit into receivers, etc, along with control chips to store programs and take signals, it is just a case of waiting for someone to do it. That's why a ban is so important - whatever you can do with a PC and a speedo is just a whisker away from a couple of gyros, a bit of software and a PC.
As you say, a definite advantage which the average Joe could do without having to get their head around!
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