Originally Posted by
neville_nobody
How does autonomous aircraft fly through thunderstorms?
Current weather radar pictures are synthetic in most modern airliners. This means that the computer has already looked at the raw data, analysed the information and presented what it believes to be useful info about it to the human pilot.
Now, we may well have opinions about how well it does this, but either way, the computer is already in the loop.
Originally Posted by
neville_nobody
How do autonomous is aircraft fly to non ILS aerodromes or better still a no instrument approach aerodrome?
There are already autonomous aircraft doing this as previously mentioned.
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...ml#post9481044
Originally Posted by
neville_nobody
How do autonomous aircraft land in gusty 40knot crosswinds?
How do autonomous aircraft land with shifting winds?
As previously discussed and agreed by John Farley, the answer is better than humans since the Comet.
Originally Posted by
neville_nobody
How do autonomous aircraft handle data input failures or data corruption?
(ie airspeed indications are no longer reliable or false sensory inputs ie stall warning goes off incorrectly)
Modern airliners are already totally dependent on software to fly. The computers are between the pilot and the controls whether they are autonomous or not. If data being corrupted is a problem, then the problem is already with us.
Added to this, it has unfortunately been shown that human pilots don't necessarily deal with such a scenario anyway.
Originally Posted by
neville_nobody
This small list of problems will just be the beginning of what needs to be solved before we have the technology for autonomy.
Actually, whilst there are many hurdles to overcome, I think your list is entirely exclusive of any of them.