Originally Posted by
Lancelot de boyles
I wonder how the Apollo landing, Sioux City and the Sully Ditching would have turned out with total automation.
If I remember correctly, at least one Apollo landing was flown all the way down by the computer. Others would have landed in craters or on rocks, and bad things would have happened as a result. Another required a last-minute software patch because there was a chunk of metal rattling around inside the controls that intermittently shorted the abort switch.
Of course they weren't designed to handle those situations, so no-one was surprised. But, to handle it properly, you'd need either much fancier radar, or some kind of computer vision system that would spot hazards and avoid them. I presume any pilotless airliner would need something similar for avoiding birds, drones, people who drive on the runway at the last second, etc.