How many years to get automated aircraft drones?
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How many years to get automated aircraft drones?
Hi. I am just being curious.
How long before we see aircraft turning into commercial drones like the automated ones in the military. 2045? 2030?. If at least one of the manufacturers produces one then we might see industry wide adoption very quickly .
How long before we see aircraft turning into commercial drones like the automated ones in the military. 2045? 2030?. If at least one of the manufacturers produces one then we might see industry wide adoption very quickly .
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Well... are there not plenty of commercial drones in our sky, taking pictures and spying all what we are doing? In the US, they are making fuzz about all that these days. From a technology point of view, there are no real difficulties to completely automate flying... But who wants to give the life of 100 people in the hands of a computer? It is only a matter of having a company willing to invest in the necessary lobbying to reduce the crews from 2 to 1+1 computerised pilot and further from 1+1 to 0+1 computerised pilot (this one has already the necessary integrated redundancy).
There are already google cars that have driving licenses from some US states. And driving a car is way less predictable than flying a plane... so eases automation as flying a plane is extremely procedural. So who needs pilots tomorrow?
There are already google cars that have driving licenses from some US states. And driving a car is way less predictable than flying a plane... so eases automation as flying a plane is extremely procedural. So who needs pilots tomorrow?
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2030 seems to soon IMO. It will happen one day, but probably won't be common in my life time. I just can't see passengers feeling happy without hearing and seeing the pilot.
Manufacturers will have to be brave, they could design this genius aircraft that passengers are too scared to fly on. Not to mention who wants to trust a fully automatic plane with 100s of lives with nobody monitoring it. The main bugs in aircraft are only realised once they enter service....that could be 1000 lives too late.
Manufacturers will have to be brave, they could design this genius aircraft that passengers are too scared to fly on. Not to mention who wants to trust a fully automatic plane with 100s of lives with nobody monitoring it. The main bugs in aircraft are only realised once they enter service....that could be 1000 lives too late.
Currently drones crash an order of magnitude more often than manned aircraft, but by the time World War III is finished, they will have found and fixed almost all the ways in which a drone can crash and piloted airliners will be a thing of the past.
Next question - will we still be able to fly our light aircraft around in an unpredictable fashion, or will they be banned to make life easier for the drones.
You could argue that drones are already common in space. I think I'm right in saying that nobody ever hand flew a shuttle approach, or a Saturn V launch.
Next question - will we still be able to fly our light aircraft around in an unpredictable fashion, or will they be banned to make life easier for the drones.
You could argue that drones are already common in space. I think I'm right in saying that nobody ever hand flew a shuttle approach, or a Saturn V launch.
Last edited by abgd; 17th Mar 2013 at 22:19.
2030 seems to soon IMO. It will happen one day, but probably won't be common in my life time. I just can't see passengers feeling happy without hearing and seeing the pilot.
I think it is just a matter of time.
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I too think its just a matter of time. Aircraft are the most predictable when it comes to type of transport and we already have a lot of automation now a days. However there will always be opposition until a lot is proven and rightly so.
Cars are recently being tried and even though 2 states have allowed these it still takes a lot of time of adopt these. By the these rules trickle down to developing countries it will at least be a good 7 - 10 years. These are just the rules. By the time majority of cars on road are automated it will be a good amount of time .
However I think the airline industry is much more flexible . Even if a new plane will be operating for like 20 years, because its a global industry dominated by few manufactures (at least for commercial) , the adoption scale is global. About 10-15 years from now we could expect something to be made. But by the everyone will be flying in one of those, I won't be living to see it.
Unless of course we don't have any accidents in between that seem to expose an underlying problem . I think the industry is fairly tried and tested but we can't rule out anything , one problem can change everything .
I think trains should be first tried for full automation. They lie somewhere inbetween both in terms of predictability.
Cars are recently being tried and even though 2 states have allowed these it still takes a lot of time of adopt these. By the these rules trickle down to developing countries it will at least be a good 7 - 10 years. These are just the rules. By the time majority of cars on road are automated it will be a good amount of time .
However I think the airline industry is much more flexible . Even if a new plane will be operating for like 20 years, because its a global industry dominated by few manufactures (at least for commercial) , the adoption scale is global. About 10-15 years from now we could expect something to be made. But by the everyone will be flying in one of those, I won't be living to see it.
Unless of course we don't have any accidents in between that seem to expose an underlying problem . I think the industry is fairly tried and tested but we can't rule out anything , one problem can change everything .
I think trains should be first tried for full automation. They lie somewhere inbetween both in terms of predictability.
What I wonder is whether existing airliners are likely to be retrofitted with AI pilots?
This is an important question, because if so it would mean that a lot of people starting their careers now may be left career-less at that awkward age where you've gotten rather good at your job, but are unlikely to find another if you lose it.
On the other hand, if the aircraft being built over the next decade or so are likely to stay manned until the end of their service lives, then the number of pilots and number of piloted aircraft are likely to decline at approximately the same rate.
This is an important question, because if so it would mean that a lot of people starting their careers now may be left career-less at that awkward age where you've gotten rather good at your job, but are unlikely to find another if you lose it.
On the other hand, if the aircraft being built over the next decade or so are likely to stay manned until the end of their service lives, then the number of pilots and number of piloted aircraft are likely to decline at approximately the same rate.
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Most if not all modern wide body jets are currently capable of taking off, flying to a destination and auto-landing at suitbaly equiped airports with little or no input from the crew - with the crew being there only in case of problems - adding even more system duplication and telementry system for some remote step-in in case of extreme error and you have an aircraft that 99% of the time would be doing the job itself. The problem remains, "who want to be flying the 1%?".
It seems likley that there will 'always' be a human pilot on board for the forseeable future.
I think that "Drones" of the type indicated by the question will first appear as helicopters - they exist already and have high risk supply roles and soon evacuation of injured servicemen.
It is not too much a of leap to have the same system carrying Mr. Business Tycoon from his country house to a landing site atop the city center corporate HQ - if something goes wrong only one loss not hundreds(notwithstanding the helicopter hitting building scenario).
It seems likley that there will 'always' be a human pilot on board for the forseeable future.
I think that "Drones" of the type indicated by the question will first appear as helicopters - they exist already and have high risk supply roles and soon evacuation of injured servicemen.
It is not too much a of leap to have the same system carrying Mr. Business Tycoon from his country house to a landing site atop the city center corporate HQ - if something goes wrong only one loss not hundreds(notwithstanding the helicopter hitting building scenario).
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For people starting out now it will be ok for many years ,but about 20 years from now they may be put into tough situations and then the profession will turn into another one of those computer replaced solutions.
While its very difficult to think about it now, I think people who argue against will slowly start adapting , especially if some accident happens due to pilot error. And then everyone will slowly start pointing towards some odd statistics of this and that and how self driving cars reduced accidents by <insert large number>% etc etc and how automation solves everything .
But I also think there are some fundamental things that makes it difficult to replace especially if you think about incidents like Hudson .
While its very difficult to think about it now, I think people who argue against will slowly start adapting , especially if some accident happens due to pilot error. And then everyone will slowly start pointing towards some odd statistics of this and that and how self driving cars reduced accidents by <insert large number>% etc etc and how automation solves everything .
But I also think there are some fundamental things that makes it difficult to replace especially if you think about incidents like Hudson .
