FMS82
I’m not so sure. There are a lot of problems still to sort out.
I have no doubt that eventually we will have fusion-powered autonomous electric aircraft but there’s a lot of engineering between now and then.
It's been done on trains, it's been done on cars, it's been done on ships....
I’ll give you trains but that was possible using 19th century technology and the vast majority still have human drivers. Cars, despite all the hype (and billions of $), are still a long way from full autonomy, and that’s in something that can pull over and stop by the side of the road with the hazards on if it gets really confused. Wish I could do that in an aeroplane!
I think there is a parallel here with driving automation levels: they go from zero (no assistance at all) to five (full automation). Level 1 includes things like active cruise control and lane assist, which operate within defined parameters and require regular driver input and Level 2 adds stuff like manoeuvring in traffic jams but driver still required. So far so good. Level 3 starts adding hands off stuff and Level 4 is close to not needing to provide any input, but still can’t “go anywhere”.
There is a significant body of opinion that Level 3/4 autonomy is less useful than it might appear and that we should really go straight to Level 5, even though it may take a while. One of the reasons is that you have abstracted the human away from the functioning of the vehicle, but still require them to intervene at short notice should things start going wrong. This is a big ask and similar to the automation dependence we see emerging in aviation.
There is a marked difference between technology demonstrations in a curated environment and something that can operate safely under all circumstances. For the level of autonomy indicated, this is going to have to involve ML/AI: how quickly are regulators going to respond to that?