End of Aircraft Operation
Seems a pity that this topic ends up as a series of individual incidents/accidents being quoted as 'evidence' supporting or condemning the 'systems' being mooted. It may be possible to select one, or more, such events to support/condemn a course of action but the ultimate criterion is life or death. Apart from having somebody buy the beers and guide to the best night spots, was the 74 Classic a safer machine than the 400? If in doubt, listen to the CVR tape and accompanying visual depiction of the Evergreen freighter into KL; or the details of the Delta Tristar into the swamp. A lifetime in and around aviation encompassed more than enough involvement with the outcomes of piloting 'skills' to view any potential improvements with interest and cautious enthusiasm. Both humans and computers are limited - using the best features of each would seem, to me to be a sensible compromise.
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1005 Agree
How many times do we have to put up with tech nerds getting all excited about the impending demise of the pilot. There is one simple reality. There is no current airliner in the advanced design stage that does not have two pilots in the front. If Boeing thought they were going to get a quantum leap in the market place they would not have persisted with a 50 year old design but gone the pilotless aircraft path.
but I understand the limitations within any field. Even in cutting edge areas where significant progress has been made, we must be cautious. When I fly to the Philippines and Hong Kong (or anywhere, for that matter) as a passenger I want two competent pilots flying Join Date: Oct 2008
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Exactly
There is no evidence any computer system would make the same decision or do it as well as Sully did. I have found this thread very interesting, but I will go back to reading it--as I have said what I can on this subject--and will leave it to you, professional pilots.
Scenario - you just lost thrust on both engines and are unlikely to get it back - so you're looking at a forced landing. So you need to determine - given your weight, altitude, and airspeed - how far you can glide and what potential landing spots are available within that range (as well as any configuration changes needed to achieve that range). Furthermore, with appropriate programing an autonomous system would instantly know where every available landing spot was (no need to ask ATC). The only 'hard' part would be determining the best option of where to put it down (obviously a runway would be best, but if available range doesn't allow that picking the best alternative).
Now, Sully did all this, but it took him ~20 seconds - exceptionally good for a human under those circumstances - but an autonomous system could have done all that in a fraction of a second - and by making that determination ~20 seconds earlier, there would still have been enough altitude/airspeed to make an actual runway (in which case John Q Public probably wouldn't even remember it happened).
Basically, if the scenario has ever happened, or if the designers can dream it up, an autonomous system can be developed to account for it - with the designers having the advantage of being able to sort through various different actions to determine which is most likely to provide a happy outcome (unlike a human pilot who basically only gets one chance to get it right). The weakness of any autonomous system is dealing with a totally new, unanticipated scenario - humans are creative, and can think up new, inventive ways to deal with unknown - computers not so much.
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Too Theoretical
You are totally missing the point. Sully is a reasonably easy scenario to program for:
Scenario - you just lost thrust on both engines and are unlikely to get it back - so you're looking at a forced landing. So you need to determine - given your weight, altitude, and airspeed - how far you can glide and what potential landing spots are available within that range (as well as any configuration changes needed to achieve that range). Furthermore, with appropriate programing an autonomous system would instantly know where every available landing spot was (no need to ask ATC). The only 'hard' part would be determining the best option of where to put it down (obviously a runway would be best, but if available range doesn't allow that picking the best alternative).
Now, Sully did all this, but it took him ~20 seconds - exceptionally good for a human under those circumstances - but an autonomous system could have done all that in a fraction of a second - and by making that determination ~20 seconds earlier, there would still have been enough altitude/airspeed to make an actual runway (in which case John Q Public probably wouldn't even remember it happened).
Basically, if the scenario has ever happened, or if the designers can dream it up, an autonomous system can be developed to account for it - with the designers having the advantage of being able to sort through various different actions to determine which is most likely to provide a happy outcome (unlike a human pilot who basically only gets one chance to get it right). The weakness of any autonomous system is dealing with a totally new, unanticipated scenario - humans are creative, and can think up new, inventive ways to deal with unknown - computers not so much.
Scenario - you just lost thrust on both engines and are unlikely to get it back - so you're looking at a forced landing. So you need to determine - given your weight, altitude, and airspeed - how far you can glide and what potential landing spots are available within that range (as well as any configuration changes needed to achieve that range). Furthermore, with appropriate programing an autonomous system would instantly know where every available landing spot was (no need to ask ATC). The only 'hard' part would be determining the best option of where to put it down (obviously a runway would be best, but if available range doesn't allow that picking the best alternative).
Now, Sully did all this, but it took him ~20 seconds - exceptionally good for a human under those circumstances - but an autonomous system could have done all that in a fraction of a second - and by making that determination ~20 seconds earlier, there would still have been enough altitude/airspeed to make an actual runway (in which case John Q Public probably wouldn't even remember it happened).
Basically, if the scenario has ever happened, or if the designers can dream it up, an autonomous system can be developed to account for it - with the designers having the advantage of being able to sort through various different actions to determine which is most likely to provide a happy outcome (unlike a human pilot who basically only gets one chance to get it right). The weakness of any autonomous system is dealing with a totally new, unanticipated scenario - humans are creative, and can think up new, inventive ways to deal with unknown - computers not so much.
Here is where you make a mostly false claim, unfortunately: "Basically, if the scenario has ever happened, or if the designers can dream it up, an autonomous system can be developed to account for it - with the designers having the advantage of being able to sort through various different actions to determine which is most likely to provide a happy outcome." They can account for a plethora of scenarios, yes, and often assist pilots in making more rapid decisions, but this is not universally true. The progress in aviation, financial, big data, and epidemic autonomous, and intelligent systems (AI/ML) has not been as rapid or consistent as many in the field predicted or as many of us hoped they would be. No engineer or computer scientist is that good.
" but an autonomous system could have done all that in a fraction of a second - and by making that determination ~20 seconds earlier".
The operative phrase here is maybe could have; there is no guarantee this would happen in actual real-world conditions.
" The weakness of any autonomous system is dealing with a totally new, unanticipated scenario - humans are creative, and can think up new, inventive ways to deal with unknown - computers not so much."
We mostly agree here, and that is a major issue, but there are other issues of detecting nuanced conditions that to date the autonomous systems still do rather poorly with. Sensors even when they are not malfunctioning have real-world issues differentiating between some important visual data cues. Sully, at the time, was an unanticipated scenario that involved more than just two engines out.
After seeing Boeing destroy its engineering legacy with the 787 Dreamliner, a worthless aircraft, and now the 737 Max, they have a lot of errors to fix, and hopefully, the engineers now will report known design flaws rather than just mention briefly in an email. Hopefully, Airbus will not become too theoretical with its new autonomous systems and will remain practical.
In my own experience with global teams of Computer Vision, Machine Learning, and accident avoidance in land-systems, we have seen incredible improvements where information processed is far faster and at least as accurate as human end-users, but we also have seen systems make mistakes people rarely if ever do.
More salient links to the subject at hand:
https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/...ety_Challenges
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...-idUSKBN1X31ST
https://www.news.com.au/technology/i...8d1f6d65f4c27e
Last edited by jcbmack; 4th Jul 2020 at 21:30.
Jcbmack - you're still making the fundamental error of applying the current state to something decades in the future. Compare today's computing capability to what it was 50 years ago (your digital watch has more computing capability than the Lunar Module did when they landed on the moon - never mind what your phone can do), then try to extrapolate that another 50 years into the future. Sure, sensor failures are a problem, but with orders of magnitude more computing capability available (and cheaper), you might have a dozen redundant sensors instead of today's two or three. Today's computers still struggle with the basic vision that the human Mk 1 eyeball is capable of, but that's improving rapidly and the computer's vision isn't limited to what the human eyeball can do - plus the computer can look at 360 degrees in all three dimensions simultaneously - something we humans can only fantasize about. FBW and FADEC were greeted with massive skepticism when they started coming on-line 40 years ago (and yes, I heard the naysayers who claimed they'd never fly on an aircraft so equipped) - today nobody would even dream of designing a new aircraft without them. Meanwhile, human capabilities are not meaningfully different than they were 50 years ago and pilot error has become the leading cause of aircraft accidents (the MAX fiasco not withstanding).
Like I originally posted, it won't happen soon - my prediction is 40 to 50 years - but assuming that humankind doesn't manage to kill itself off in the meantime, the time will come when fully autonomous aircraft are not just common, like FBW and FADEC, they will have become the norm.
BTW, I'm not sure when this became about Boeing (given the discussion started regarding an Airbus project), but calling the 787 "worthless" unfortunately reveals your bias. In spite it's early difficulties, it's become the most successful new widebody in history - with just shy of a thousand aircraft delivered less than 9 years after EIS - no other widebody is even in the ballpark to those numbers.
Like I originally posted, it won't happen soon - my prediction is 40 to 50 years - but assuming that humankind doesn't manage to kill itself off in the meantime, the time will come when fully autonomous aircraft are not just common, like FBW and FADEC, they will have become the norm.
BTW, I'm not sure when this became about Boeing (given the discussion started regarding an Airbus project), but calling the 787 "worthless" unfortunately reveals your bias. In spite it's early difficulties, it's become the most successful new widebody in history - with just shy of a thousand aircraft delivered less than 9 years after EIS - no other widebody is even in the ballpark to those numbers.
Last edited by tdracer; 5th Jul 2020 at 01:44. Reason: fixed typo
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I hear your points.
Jcbmack - you're still making the fundamental error of applying the current state to something decades in the future. Compare today's computing capability to what it was 50 years ago (your digital watch has more computing capability than the Lunar Module did when they landed on the moon - never mind what your phone can do), then try to extrapolate that another 50 years into the future. Sure, sensor failures are a problem, but with orders of magnitude more computing capability available (and cheaper), you might have a dozen redundant sensors instead of today's two or three. Today's computers still struggle with the basic vision that the human Mk 1 eyeball is capable of, but that's improving rapidly and the computer's vision isn't limited to what the human eyeball can do - plus the computer can look at 360 degrees in all three dimensions simultaneously - something we humans can only fantasize about. FBW and FADEC were greeted with massive skepticism when they started coming on-line 40 years ago (and yes, I heard the naysayers who claimed they'd never fly on an aircraft so equipped) - today nobody would even dream of designing a new aircraft without them. Meanwhile, human capabilities are not meaningfully different than they were 50 years ago and pilot error has become the leading cause of aircraft accidents (the MAX fiasco not withstanding).
Like I originally posted, it won't happen soon - my prediction is 40 to 50 years - but assuming that humankind doesn't manage to kill itself off in the meantime, the time will come when fully autonomous aircraft are not just common, like FBW and FADEC, they will have become the norm.
BTW, I'm not sure when this became about Boeing (given the discussion started regarding an Airbus project), but calling the 787 "worthless" unfortunately reveals your bias. In spite it's early difficulties, it's become the most successful new widebody in history - with just shy of a thousand aircraft delivered less than 9 months after EIS - no other widebody is even in the ballpark to those numbers.
Like I originally posted, it won't happen soon - my prediction is 40 to 50 years - but assuming that humankind doesn't manage to kill itself off in the meantime, the time will come when fully autonomous aircraft are not just common, like FBW and FADEC, they will have become the norm.
BTW, I'm not sure when this became about Boeing (given the discussion started regarding an Airbus project), but calling the 787 "worthless" unfortunately reveals your bias. In spite it's early difficulties, it's become the most successful new widebody in history - with just shy of a thousand aircraft delivered less than 9 months after EIS - no other widebody is even in the ballpark to those numbers.
The 40-50 year timeline, I think we will see a plethora of technological improvements and more ML involved in autonomous systems as a whole. I am just conservative about what the systems' consistent output capabilities will be.
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We had HAL in 2001 , well actually we didn't but he is coming in 2101 but he is not going to let you control the flight then either.
The problem (well at least one problem) is that the modern autopilot seems to carry on until it can't handle the situation then dumps the problem on the pilot who is not up to speed in real time needed to right the wrong. Being out of practice by not hand flying on a regular basis and practicing irregular situations isn't helping the pilots to handle problems on the rare occasions they do arise. There is a disconnect between man and machine which rears its head now and then.
The problem (well at least one problem) is that the modern autopilot seems to carry on until it can't handle the situation then dumps the problem on the pilot who is not up to speed in real time needed to right the wrong. Being out of practice by not hand flying on a regular basis and practicing irregular situations isn't helping the pilots to handle problems on the rare occasions they do arise. There is a disconnect between man and machine which rears its head now and then.
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Jcbmack - you're still making the fundamental error of applying the current state to something decades in the future. Compare today's computing capability to what it was 50 years ago (your digital watch has more computing capability than the Lunar Module did when they landed on the moon - never mind what your phone can do), then try to extrapolate that another 50 years into the future.
Join the 'Presentology' Society
For those who persist in 'designing' the future by only looking backwards, or wistfully speculate, - a few words from Russell Ackoff.
https://thesystemsthinker.com/a-life...tems-thinking/
"… acting appropriately in the present …, you cannot learn from my mistakes, only from your own. I want to encourage, not discourage, your making your own." An alternative view of Airbus research ?
Moore's 'association', never a law, is dying; the expansion, now 'S' shape curve levelling off.
Power required, heat dissipation, cost effectiveness.
also https://brandongaille.com/25-splendi...ackoff-quotes/
"Expertise reflects tacit knowledge, not the mastery of procedures or the accumulation of academic honours."
https://thesystemsthinker.com/a-life...tems-thinking/
"… acting appropriately in the present …, you cannot learn from my mistakes, only from your own. I want to encourage, not discourage, your making your own." An alternative view of Airbus research ?
Moore's 'association', never a law, is dying; the expansion, now 'S' shape curve levelling off.
Power required, heat dissipation, cost effectiveness.
also https://brandongaille.com/25-splendi...ackoff-quotes/
"Expertise reflects tacit knowledge, not the mastery of procedures or the accumulation of academic honours."
Last edited by safetypee; 5th Jul 2020 at 08:42.
I think you will always need humans in the loop.
Yes there have been far too many accidents caused by stupid or poor or bad or fatigued piloting. But I think the answer is not to remove the pilots - the way forward is to try to remove the poor piloting.
We should certainly refine the present automation so the human can interface with it even more reliably - knowing as we now do, the fallibilities of the human senses and brain. Under stressful situations our hearing becomes ignored. Tests show that in high workload situations we do not notice a person in a Gorilla suit in full view, walking amongst other people. We suffer information tunnel vision or overload, and cannot see the wood for the trees.
Pilot training should be a true measure of a pilot's skill and ability, not a box ticking exercise. How about that every year, only the top performing pilots in the SIM became the Captains for the next year? The others stay as, or are demoted to F/Os. Same thing every year, so those in the LHS would always be those with the top 50% of skill, ability and good organisation. That would remove LHS complacency or low ability. I was deeply shocked in my last SIM that an "experienced" long-haul Captain did not know how to program a hold.
Autonomous aircraft could certainly cruise unaided up where there is nothing close to hit - and as long as there were no system failures or passengers becoming ill. And when aircraft systems have been set and checked (by the pilots), they can auto-land, as we know. But what about taxiing and the nose-wheel slipping in a turn due to ice or oil on the taxiway? We humans would instantly reduce the steering angle and perhaps gently brake. I know cars have ABS and traction control using yaw angle processing, but it is hard to imagine an autonomous system being able to 100% deal with taxiing. For example a baggage truck pulling out in front of them. Or low visibility at night
And why autonomous aircraft anyway? You still need a cabin crew, fuellers, engineers, ramp agents, loaders, caterers etc etc, someone has to coordinate all those people and plan the fuel load and check weather etc. Getting rid of two people amongst the dozens needed to get an aircraft into the sky seems to me to be the wrong focus.
Any company constantly tries to reduce costs. If a weaving mill can buy an automated weaving machine that does the work of two skilled weavers and only needs one unskilled worker to oil it, of course the company will become more efficient and make more money. But a weaving machine is not an aircraft or a coach operating in four dimensions and full of passengers.
Yes there have been far too many accidents caused by stupid or poor or bad or fatigued piloting. But I think the answer is not to remove the pilots - the way forward is to try to remove the poor piloting.
We should certainly refine the present automation so the human can interface with it even more reliably - knowing as we now do, the fallibilities of the human senses and brain. Under stressful situations our hearing becomes ignored. Tests show that in high workload situations we do not notice a person in a Gorilla suit in full view, walking amongst other people. We suffer information tunnel vision or overload, and cannot see the wood for the trees.
Pilot training should be a true measure of a pilot's skill and ability, not a box ticking exercise. How about that every year, only the top performing pilots in the SIM became the Captains for the next year? The others stay as, or are demoted to F/Os. Same thing every year, so those in the LHS would always be those with the top 50% of skill, ability and good organisation. That would remove LHS complacency or low ability. I was deeply shocked in my last SIM that an "experienced" long-haul Captain did not know how to program a hold.
Autonomous aircraft could certainly cruise unaided up where there is nothing close to hit - and as long as there were no system failures or passengers becoming ill. And when aircraft systems have been set and checked (by the pilots), they can auto-land, as we know. But what about taxiing and the nose-wheel slipping in a turn due to ice or oil on the taxiway? We humans would instantly reduce the steering angle and perhaps gently brake. I know cars have ABS and traction control using yaw angle processing, but it is hard to imagine an autonomous system being able to 100% deal with taxiing. For example a baggage truck pulling out in front of them. Or low visibility at night
And why autonomous aircraft anyway? You still need a cabin crew, fuellers, engineers, ramp agents, loaders, caterers etc etc, someone has to coordinate all those people and plan the fuel load and check weather etc. Getting rid of two people amongst the dozens needed to get an aircraft into the sky seems to me to be the wrong focus.
Any company constantly tries to reduce costs. If a weaving mill can buy an automated weaving machine that does the work of two skilled weavers and only needs one unskilled worker to oil it, of course the company will become more efficient and make more money. But a weaving machine is not an aircraft or a coach operating in four dimensions and full of passengers.
Or low visibility at night
If we can design a car to drive down a busy, uncontrolled neighborhood road autonomously, taxing an aircraft at a controlled airport becomes almost trivial.
True, there are drones that can auto land on aircraft carriers these days. However extremely high total loss rates and bad crash statistics of bigger military drones seem to indicate that human operators are still needed for unusual situations and human operators with not only systems knowledge but pilotage skills and aviation background knowledge. The military tried to convert non pilot ground staff to drone operators to save money. AFAIK with big problems like clueless operators wanting to do steep turns at high altitude and stalling ignoring known icing conditions and losing their drone and such.
Therefore especially for passenger aircraft I see a need for human pilots, as in at least two of them on board, for some longer time to come. Just wait for the first drone crashes within the public view and how that affect will their acceptance. We are observing this with automated cars already.
Therefore especially for passenger aircraft I see a need for human pilots, as in at least two of them on board, for some longer time to come. Just wait for the first drone crashes within the public view and how that affect will their acceptance. We are observing this with automated cars already.
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I don’t think that large passenger aircraft will ever be designed for a single (human) pilot. I think that the transition, when it comes, will be from two to zero.
Unless the pilot is chained into his seat (which is feasible) and guaranteed never to become incapacitated (which isn’t feasible), the possibility exists that the cockpit will become unmanned at some unpredictable phase of flight. The control system will have to designed to take the aircraft all the way to a safe landing with no human input at all.
SLF are going to love Peter the Pilot. He has 5,000,000 hours and has memorized all the arrivals and departures at every airport in the world. He knows more about the effect of moving any control surface of his airplane than any of his human designers. He can call up and execute a non-normal checklist in a heartbeat. He is so efficient that he can even adjust the control parameters for a particular airplane’s quirks during flight.
Airlines are going to love Peter the Pilot, too. He can fly any airplane that shows up at the gate. He never complains to the Chief Pilot. He doesn't suffer from circadian lows. He remembers every lesson from his very first flight. He can train a new co-pilot in a minute with a USB stick. And, neither of them need any time in the sim.
Designing Peter the Pilot isn’t going to require artificial intelligence, or machine learning, or quantum computers, or any of a plethora (today’s word) of other fancy processes. Nope, he’s going to be developed in the traditional manner, with engineers trying to imagine all of the possibilities and to come up with strategies to achieve an acceptable outcome for each.
Unfortunately, the Peter they develop won’t be perfect. There will be accidents, and even fatalities. But that doesn’t mean that SLF will demand humans up front. Peter has almost unlimited capacity for being improved, unlike humans, who are effectively at their limit now.
Sully might be the cat’s pyjamas, but who gets to fly behind him now?
YYZjim
Unless the pilot is chained into his seat (which is feasible) and guaranteed never to become incapacitated (which isn’t feasible), the possibility exists that the cockpit will become unmanned at some unpredictable phase of flight. The control system will have to designed to take the aircraft all the way to a safe landing with no human input at all.
SLF are going to love Peter the Pilot. He has 5,000,000 hours and has memorized all the arrivals and departures at every airport in the world. He knows more about the effect of moving any control surface of his airplane than any of his human designers. He can call up and execute a non-normal checklist in a heartbeat. He is so efficient that he can even adjust the control parameters for a particular airplane’s quirks during flight.
Airlines are going to love Peter the Pilot, too. He can fly any airplane that shows up at the gate. He never complains to the Chief Pilot. He doesn't suffer from circadian lows. He remembers every lesson from his very first flight. He can train a new co-pilot in a minute with a USB stick. And, neither of them need any time in the sim.
Designing Peter the Pilot isn’t going to require artificial intelligence, or machine learning, or quantum computers, or any of a plethora (today’s word) of other fancy processes. Nope, he’s going to be developed in the traditional manner, with engineers trying to imagine all of the possibilities and to come up with strategies to achieve an acceptable outcome for each.
Unfortunately, the Peter they develop won’t be perfect. There will be accidents, and even fatalities. But that doesn’t mean that SLF will demand humans up front. Peter has almost unlimited capacity for being improved, unlike humans, who are effectively at their limit now.
Sully might be the cat’s pyjamas, but who gets to fly behind him now?
YYZjim
Agree that the number of "superior pilots" that save aircraft are far out weighted by the number that cause accidents (whether from incompetence of fatigue is another question). But one of the biggest hurdles to overcome for the pilotless aircraft will be decision making. How many warnings (unable to find) were there for QF 32. Although computers are faster and getting more so than humans they will continue to digest data to make a “D”. If new data keeps incoming than when will the “D” be made or do we go for a “sensory” overload with the computer reverting back to piloting 101, fly the aircraft, which a) it never did and b) cannot with data incoming.Yes the day will come that computers will fly the aircraft but the Sully example about a computer being quicker only holds water (forgive the pun) if the computer has a program for bird strike, low level, thrust loss from both engines for every possible airport in its programming (and any other scenario not thought of).
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Whilst there has been much discussion about pilotless operations, my post started by quoting Airbus. I say quoting Airbus but I actually mean quoting a Flight International article. I can't read it now because they say I've exceeded my article limit. If they think I'll give them any money for their entirely worthless re-printing of PR handouts they must be deluded.
Airbus refer to a new way of flying aircraft - potentially a complete game changer affecting most of its readers - and the 'journalists' at Flight International make absolutely zero effort to find out what it's all about.
I just pray somewhere there is someone worth their pay, picking up a phone and dialling Toulouse.
Airbus refer to a new way of flying aircraft - potentially a complete game changer affecting most of its readers - and the 'journalists' at Flight International make absolutely zero effort to find out what it's all about.
I just pray somewhere there is someone worth their pay, picking up a phone and dialling Toulouse.
Even today, electronic systems can see better in challenging vision situations than humans - they only time the human Mark 1 eyeball is superior is in near perfect conditions (and that advantage is shrinking fast). Add some smoke or fog, low light, etc. and electronics become superior (with the advantage of being able to instantly determine distances to millimeters - far more accurate than any human). A CAT III autoland wouldn't be remotely possible using only human vision.
If we can design a car to drive down a busy, uncontrolled neighborhood road autonomously, taxing an aircraft at a controlled airport becomes almost trivial.
If we can design a car to drive down a busy, uncontrolled neighborhood road autonomously, taxing an aircraft at a controlled airport becomes almost trivial.
Rather you than me.
I was not saying human vision is better than electronic vision, I meant that the human eye/brain combination and a human's ability to adapt to changing situations and the unforeseen is vastly superior to a computer's.
If we think we can design a car to drive down the freeway and avoid all obstacles, but it confuses the side of a truck for the sky and crashes into the truck....?
Asimo is an extremely impressive humanoid robot that can run up a few stairs and walk bipedally unaided. But he has to spend about a minute standing in front of the stairs programming himself and his visual detectors before he can do so. As he does this he adjusts his position by a few cm one way or another before making the attempt. Then, eventually, he runs up four steps. Absolutely brilliant, really impressive. But any human who can walk can do that. And then as Asimo left the auditorium, he walked into a door that he was expecting to be open, but which had swung half shut.
I am not a non believer, my first career was in electronics and I have written computer code. I just don't see a valid reason for making commercial passenger aircraft autonomous. It won't prevent accidents, it will replace current accidents with other types.
CAT lll autolands don't use electronic vision, they follow radio beams and radar altitude measurements. As you know.
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I had a short rummage around on Airbus's site. There was no real explanation as to why they were doing computer vision taxy, take-off and landing. However if you haven't already seen this, it will be informative:
https://www.cleansky.eu/european-avi...enger-aircraft
To quote: The consensus at Airbus is that single pilot operations will be a necessary and inevitable 'game changer' to face next generation aircraft challenges:
https://www.cleansky.eu/european-avi...enger-aircraft
To quote: The consensus at Airbus is that single pilot operations will be a necessary and inevitable 'game changer' to face next generation aircraft challenges:
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Even if there is a principally new transport-category aircraft flown by one pilot or, highly unlikely, operated autonomously from the ground, that will be decades away from now. And, with the present state of affairs, I seriously doubt that we'll see ANY major new type until the 2030s. Some Chinese fast-hand remake of something existing, like that dinosaur based on the MD80 which was rolled out recently - maybe. Some minor engine or computer upgrades to an existing type - maybe. But something principally new, involving technology which couldn't become widespread even in cars, let alone in aircraft? I doubt it. First, all major manufacturers need a return on investment for whatever has been designed in the past decade. They will first sell quite a lot of A320neo, B737MAX, A350, B777-9, E190-E2, A220 etc before they will even look into investing into a brand new project. And that will drag on for a while, given the overall deferral of orders for the next 2-4 years. Second, a realistic timeline for developing, testing and certification of a new aircraft type is at least 5 to 7 years, and that if you use only or mostly off-the-shelf components. If you decide to implement avant-garde solutions like autonomous operation capability, you're looking into 8-10 years to make it happen. In the next couple of years, airframers will be struggling to survive as new orders will be lagging well behind airline recovery. Lots of prospective projects already got binned because of that - think the Airbus electrical jet engine for example. So, it's highly unlikely that anyone will roll out anything principally new anytime soon. And then, there are the issues of legislation, insurance, earning public trust and so on.
Uplinker - read my post #47 again. You're making the same error of basing the future state on current technology. Sure, autonomous cars still struggle with certain scenarios, but that's changing fast. Fast forward 50 years and add in several orders of magnitude more computing capability and who knows what capabilities will have been invented.