Originally Posted by
Uplinker
I believe that the London Circle tube line is driven by computers, but there is a human driver in the cab to operate the doors, and presumably to hit the emergency stop if the computer goes haywire or the human sees an obstacle. But a tube train runs in one dimension, on tracks. It also runs in specific tunnels, so the probability of obstructions is very low.
What you say about putting wires down the runway, or special street furniture etc is fine - that will work - and for that matter, planes could be simply towed to and from the runway by tug crews. But that is not computer vision, and you will still need pilots to 'conduct the flight', since they do rather more than taxi. Would you or your family fly in a pilotless aircraft?
A so-called autonomous car, even if the route is lined with copper wires or whatever, will still not be able to differentiate between a rubbish bag blowing into the road and a child chasing a ball, so it will have to emergency stop for anything it "sees", even a tumble weed, or a bird flying across the road, as they do.
Perhaps instead; a way forward to preventing horrendous airplane accidents would be to have live flight data monitoring?
If certain FDM parameters are significantly exceeded, or the profile looks badly wonky; a flight could be flagged up in real time and the chief pilot in their office could look at the flight parameters and have a direct communication channel to say to the crew, "er guys, what is going on here? You will go-around or immediately do x,y,z." etc.
Or maybe even something like the Apollo mission control?
Some railways do operate entirely automatically such as Paris metro Line 1 & several routes in Singapore. Only certain sections of the Circle line are there yet but it will in due course become fully automatic as several other tube lines already are. The driver closes the doors but is advised when to do so by the regulation system. As said, it works well in a self-enclosed system. The operator must still look for obstructions although lidar systems are being developed to do this (and Docklands Light Rail trains may bot have anyone at the front of the train). He/she is primarily a systems operator able to take over is something goes wrong. With a metro system the theory is that help will always be nearby in the case of an emergency - this is reasonable, a driver may be incapacitated should there be for example a collision. Also in the case of a problem the system should fail safe, the train will stop ideally at the next station but possibly in a tunnel, but will not fall from the sky. Obviously there are issues should there be a fire or indeed someone on board have a medical emergency.
If absolute safety is a target (not that you will ever get it) you can argue that a plane should have dual control systems, one onboard and one on the ground. Working out a protocol as to which to use in the case of an emergency such as a suspected on board hijacking, or indeed of ground facilities and the communication system could be an interesting problem! Not to mention whether the pilot or ground controller is legally in command.
You could argue that if the car were invented today the historical system of obtaining driving licences would be considered totally inadequate. You might want to limit driving to say the top 50% of the population by aptitude and insist on overlaying onboard anti collision systems. All very hypothetical...