Jeremy Vine Show - Pilotless Airliners
Tourist
Sorry but that's called "moving the goalposts" - some parts of the article may not be strictly relevant to this discussion but very relevant to your quite strongly stated assertion that "there are millions of optical illusions. Computers don't suffer from them"..
I'd think much more important is the researcher's comments that "what we don’t have, what we still need, is a better understanding of what’s really going on inside these neural networks.” That would suggest to me at least we are nowhere near the level of confidence required if we're planning on neural networks being used in fully autonomous airliner ops.
Ultimately I understand where you're coming from, and one day you'll be right, but I do think you're being unrealistically optimistic if you think that day is less than 30-40 years away.
That article you link to is very interesting, but I don't think it has relevance to this discussion.
I'd think much more important is the researcher's comments that "what we don’t have, what we still need, is a better understanding of what’s really going on inside these neural networks.” That would suggest to me at least we are nowhere near the level of confidence required if we're planning on neural networks being used in fully autonomous airliner ops.
Ultimately I understand where you're coming from, and one day you'll be right, but I do think you're being unrealistically optimistic if you think that day is less than 30-40 years away.
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A glance at the pictures they are showing suggests that the title of the article is eye catching but not very accurate.
That is rather different than finding actual images of the real world that cause optical illusions to a computer.
Optimism is exactly the opposite of what I have.
I would deeply love for automation in all it's forms to be banned from aviation for eternity.
If that were to happen, I would be guaranteed a job in perpetuity and a massive payrise since I am old school enough to fly without clever computers
I left airline flying to fly a totally archaic aircraft with no computer anywhere, because aircraft like that need me and as such I can still charge a premium.
Despite this, I recognise that computers will be better than me in every way soon, as autopilots already are at handling.
I think it is important to not be deluded that computers are not coming.
Know your enemy.......
........over-excitement by such as Uplinker.........
I stand corrected about the one I mentioned - I wasn't sure, hence the question mark at the end of my sentence I don't have a reference to it, but as I understand it (and I might be wrong), a vehicle with supposedly computerised control of some sort ultimately crashed and did so owing to a confusion of its vision system. Can you give me a link to it if you have one?
Judging by your impressive total of 3,419 posts so far, you seem to be the one who gets excited about things and cannot resist telling the rest of us about it.
That is extremely simplistic and is an attempt to sell an extraordinarily flawed vision system as ideal.
.......... This is why there are millions of optical illusions.
Computers don't suffer from them.
Despite this, I recognise that computers will be better than me in every way soon, as autopilots already are at handling.
.
Last edited by Uplinker; 23rd Aug 2016 at 17:18.
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I stand corrected about the one I mentioned - I wasn't sure, hence the question mark at the end of my sentence I don't have a reference to it, but as I understand it (and I might be wrong), a vehicle with supposedly computerised control ultimately crashed and did so owing to a confusion of its vision system. Can you give me a link to it if you have one?
https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...-car-elon-musk
Tesla driver killed in crash with Autopilot active, NHTSA investigating | The Verge
You will note that this car was never advertised as autonomous. It is just posh cruise control.
Because it didn't see it? Because it didn't have the required technology for walking through doors?
You are confusing robotics with computers.
Asimo was a cleverly designed robot when it was built in 2000. Now, not so much. It was never a clever computer with clever senses.
Incidentally, have you ever seen a human walk into something? If so, does it completely invalidate the entire human sensory system?
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The Airbus system reacts as designed.
It is designed to operate with a human pilot, and is specifically designed to drop out and hand over under certain circumstances.
If it were designed to operate without you, it would operate differently!
I also find it astonishing that you are using Airbus tech as if it is somehow relevant or a benchmark.
The tech in an Airbus is prehistoric!
When the airbus systems were designed, mobile phones looked like this
You might as well say "if I fall asleep in my VW beetle it crashes therefor all autonomous cars are never going to work"
Ha ha ha ha!
Stop it, please. My sides are going to split. Do you do stand up?
.
Stop it, please. My sides are going to split. Do you do stand up?
.
The technology exists to fly a large passenger aircraft from A to B without a pilot on board.
There would most likely need to be a pilot/operator on the ground monitoring the flight. That person would also probably have to deal with the various documents/certification required to legally operate the flight.
The real issue is would the travelling public get on board? I suspect some would, some wouldn't and the balance is likely to change over time as society gets used to more automation in general. For it to become 'the norm' would, I imagine, take decades - it may never reach that stage.
There would most likely need to be a pilot/operator on the ground monitoring the flight. That person would also probably have to deal with the various documents/certification required to legally operate the flight.
The real issue is would the travelling public get on board? I suspect some would, some wouldn't and the balance is likely to change over time as society gets used to more automation in general. For it to become 'the norm' would, I imagine, take decades - it may never reach that stage.
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Tourist, whether we like it or not, puts forward some strong arguements for pilotless aircraft being a reality.......so I say why waste your breath denying it, the end of our world as we know it will also happen one day as our sun turns into a red giant......I don't think we will give two hoots about who is flying our planes then!
We will all be long gone before we have to worry about pilotless aircraft putting us out of work, and the good news is my children have no interest in this God forsaken industry!! Maybe their interest in iPads will help them in the future?
GBD
We will all be long gone before we have to worry about pilotless aircraft putting us out of work, and the good news is my children have no interest in this God forsaken industry!! Maybe their interest in iPads will help them in the future?
GBD
The technology exists to fly a large passenger aircraft from A to B without a pilot on board.
How does autonomous aircraft fly through thunderstorms?
How do autonomous is aircraft fly to non ILS aerodromes or better still a no instrument approach aerodrome?
How do autonomous aircraft land in gusty 40knot crosswinds?
How do autonomous aircraft land with shifting winds?
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)
This small list of problems will just be the beginning of what needs to be solved before we have the technology for autonomy.
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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.
There are already autonomous aircraft doing this as previously mentioned.
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...ml#post9481044
As previously discussed and agreed by John Farley, the answer is better than humans since the Comet.
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.
Actually, whilst there are many hurdles to overcome, I think your list is entirely exclusive of any of them.
Now, we may well have opinions about how well it does this, but either way, the computer is already in the loop.
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...ml#post9481044
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.
Actually, whilst there are many hurdles to overcome, I think your list is entirely exclusive of any of them.
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.
In your (I think two years) on the flight deck what did you think of such radars, and did you use them in the tropics?
Certainly the modern radars on our type still needs a healthy dose of operator input to produce consistent results - FWIW we operate one side in auto and one in manual- if you rely solely on the auto system you're often given missreading or late info or even no info at all.
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wiggy
Read what I wrote.
The picture you are looking at is a synthetic creation of computer cleverness whether in manual or auto mode.
Raw data pictures are long gone, and on the whole it is an improvement.
I am not saying that weather radar pictures are great, because often they are not, but whether you like it or not, the computer is between you and the raw data anyway already.
No need to be snide about my airline time. Yes it was two years. I am fortunate however to have been paid to spend rather longer using airborne radars of many sorts since 1989. Some were better than modern airline ones at finding weather, some were truly awful.
Read what I wrote.
The picture you are looking at is a synthetic creation of computer cleverness whether in manual or auto mode.
Raw data pictures are long gone, and on the whole it is an improvement.
I am not saying that weather radar pictures are great, because often they are not, but whether you like it or not, the computer is between you and the raw data anyway already.
No need to be snide about my airline time. Yes it was two years. I am fortunate however to have been paid to spend rather longer using airborne radars of many sorts since 1989. Some were better than modern airline ones at finding weather, some were truly awful.
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I was in HK when that happened. Story went around that the hold of the now inverted aircraft held a quantity of (no longer) live frogs, the putrefaction of which was producing methane. I understand they were removed before the hull was cut up.