End of Aircraft Operation
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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.
Last edited by vilas; 7th Jul 2020 at 04:50.
...........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.
I just think of the human's visual ability to, say, distinguish the adverts from the programs on TV, and knowing when to hit the mute button. And that is the level we would need to make a safe autonomous passenger transport system. Just imagine trying to put that into computer code, or even a neural network: These people moving across the screen are an advert, but these people moving across the screen are in the film.
Or for an autonomous car: that shape moving into the road is a dog - a driver shouldn't endanger themselves or others by avoiding it, or heavy braking. Whereas that shape moving into the road is a child chasing a ball, who we must try to avoid at all costs. How do you program that? Basically, recreating the entire human eye-brain-memory processing system, which has taken millions of years to develop. Granted, a plane only taxis along defined paths, but there are still a lot of unexpected hazards that can arise that will need to be accommodated by an autonomous system.
I heard a chap on the radio who is trying to develop autonomous freight barges, so we will see
Just to add a very tiny bit to this...weight doesn't affect glide ratio; the heavier plane reaches the landing spot sooner due to a faster sink rate at a particular glide speed.
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The speed of the ligther aircraft will be slower than that of the heavier aircraft, if they are to maintain their best glide ratio.
You probably meant that.
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Well...
tdracer I fully agree with you. It's common mistake everyone makes comparing today's technology for tommorow's pilotless aircaft. But as I said this is an endless discussion and it's just that. It is not going to decide the future. It is possible to program a computer to deal with all the mistakes and errors. recorded in aviation but not possible to train a human for those situations. Routinely millions of hours are flown without any requirement of human creativity. But the discussion will carry on.
The vision system of living things is awesomely impressive. It has taken around a billion years to evolve from light sensitive spots on the skin to the advanced vision system we have today. It uses incredibly sophisticated sensors, the eyes, linked to a huge brain - about a third of which is used for visual processing - to process the data from the eyes; and it combines that and memory to assemble a live, detailed 3 dimensional image. The eye-brain-memory combination also has a subconscious function that detects and alerts movement of potential predator threats.
The result is a full colour, real time*, moving, three dimensional, detailed vision-scape.
Those visual tests you have to pass when registering with certain internet sites - 'click on the photographs containing traffic lights, or zebra crossings, or type in what the wonky letters are';to prove you are not a robot; show how basic computer vision systems are at the moment.
*A few hundred milliseconds delayed owing to all the sophisticated processing.
The result is a full colour, real time*, moving, three dimensional, detailed vision-scape.
Those visual tests you have to pass when registering with certain internet sites - 'click on the photographs containing traffic lights, or zebra crossings, or type in what the wonky letters are';to prove you are not a robot; show how basic computer vision systems are at the moment.
*A few hundred milliseconds delayed owing to all the sophisticated processing.
ENTREPPRUNEUR
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Uplinker, we are so, so much faster at creating things than Evolution.
If you watch football, cricket or tennis on the telly in the UK you'll notice computers are necessary to work out where the balls are and their trajectories. Unfortunately our billion-year-old 'eye-brain-memory combination' doesn't cut it.
In the UK, trains are driven by humans. To my knowledge there are only two exceptions - a short stretch of tunnel south of St Pancras where I believe human driving was deemed incapable of supporting the traffic density. And of course the Docklands Light Railway which carries over 120 million passengers per annum. The DLR demonstrates that while it can be impossibly challenging to drive things like humans do, it can equally be very trivial to drive things like computers can. The 1960s Trident could carry out a Cat 3C landing but only because they had put a wire down the centre of the runway. The discussion of whether computers can emulate human beings is missing the point. You don't need an autopilot to be able to do all the things humans can do. An autopilot does not need to see there is a Land Rover on the taxiway and a couple of blokes looking at a mark on the ground. All it needs to do is detect whether there is something solid in its path or have ground systems that monitor and provide control information. For normal operating procedures the task of flying a plane is very much simpler that the capabilities of a human pilot. As far as you can tell it is at least ten years before an automated car could be let loose in Central London. However automated cars have clocked up millions of miles, probably with a higher level of safety than humans ie there have been a few fatalities but less than if humans had been driving instead. If you got a group of aviation engineers and PPRUNE posters in a room together I bet it wouldn't take more than a day before they had come up with a technical environment that would support automated flight. For example, cars need fine density maps, 5G-like internet connections, various road furniture that defines the landscape to the car, protection from moving objects entering lanes in an unplanned way, etc.
I started this thread because of Airbus's PR release, slavishly regurgitated by Flight International. In retrospect it has turned out to be a red herring. Why Airbus have spent so much money on computer vision is not obvious. I suspect it's mainly come from EU subsidies ('Clean Sky). Perhaps they used to it to subsidize some other A350-1000 testing tasks. More relevant are other things they are doing like Disruptive Cockpit - https://www.airbus.com/innovation/au...us-flight.html -which is less esoteric and specifically aimed at single pilot operation .
As always these things are always technically possible long before the political and commercial will allows them to happen
If you watch football, cricket or tennis on the telly in the UK you'll notice computers are necessary to work out where the balls are and their trajectories. Unfortunately our billion-year-old 'eye-brain-memory combination' doesn't cut it.
In the UK, trains are driven by humans. To my knowledge there are only two exceptions - a short stretch of tunnel south of St Pancras where I believe human driving was deemed incapable of supporting the traffic density. And of course the Docklands Light Railway which carries over 120 million passengers per annum. The DLR demonstrates that while it can be impossibly challenging to drive things like humans do, it can equally be very trivial to drive things like computers can. The 1960s Trident could carry out a Cat 3C landing but only because they had put a wire down the centre of the runway. The discussion of whether computers can emulate human beings is missing the point. You don't need an autopilot to be able to do all the things humans can do. An autopilot does not need to see there is a Land Rover on the taxiway and a couple of blokes looking at a mark on the ground. All it needs to do is detect whether there is something solid in its path or have ground systems that monitor and provide control information. For normal operating procedures the task of flying a plane is very much simpler that the capabilities of a human pilot. As far as you can tell it is at least ten years before an automated car could be let loose in Central London. However automated cars have clocked up millions of miles, probably with a higher level of safety than humans ie there have been a few fatalities but less than if humans had been driving instead. If you got a group of aviation engineers and PPRUNE posters in a room together I bet it wouldn't take more than a day before they had come up with a technical environment that would support automated flight. For example, cars need fine density maps, 5G-like internet connections, various road furniture that defines the landscape to the car, protection from moving objects entering lanes in an unplanned way, etc.
I started this thread because of Airbus's PR release, slavishly regurgitated by Flight International. In retrospect it has turned out to be a red herring. Why Airbus have spent so much money on computer vision is not obvious. I suspect it's mainly come from EU subsidies ('Clean Sky). Perhaps they used to it to subsidize some other A350-1000 testing tasks. More relevant are other things they are doing like Disruptive Cockpit - https://www.airbus.com/innovation/au...us-flight.html -which is less esoteric and specifically aimed at single pilot operation .
As always these things are always technically possible long before the political and commercial will allows them to happen
probably (hopefully) good
We view machine performance as being black or white, yet we exist and think in an uncertain grey world.
We should judge with a range of thoughts, but all too often we, with abhorrence of uncertainty, seek black or white solutions.
“Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?”
https://demos.co.uk/blog/just-what-d...re-doing-dave/
"… they are still just good guesses made on whatever data we fed the machine."
Don't miss the embedded link https://www.wired.com/2016/05/the-end-of-code/
"… humans still have to train these systems. But for now, at least, that's a rarefied skill."
However, if machines have to learn to act like pilots, which pilots will be the teachers and what will they teach?
Or if "… computers are becoming devices for turning experience into technology", the machines learn by copying, who will these systems copy and in which situations?
… and what is 'experience' ?
We should judge with a range of thoughts, but all too often we, with abhorrence of uncertainty, seek black or white solutions.
“Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?”
https://demos.co.uk/blog/just-what-d...re-doing-dave/
"… they are still just good guesses made on whatever data we fed the machine."
Don't miss the embedded link https://www.wired.com/2016/05/the-end-of-code/
"… humans still have to train these systems. But for now, at least, that's a rarefied skill."
However, if machines have to learn to act like pilots, which pilots will be the teachers and what will they teach?
Or if "… computers are becoming devices for turning experience into technology", the machines learn by copying, who will these systems copy and in which situations?
… and what is 'experience' ?
I believe that the London Circle tube line is driven by computers, but there is a human driver in the cab to operate the doors, and presumably to hit the emergency stop if the computer goes haywire or the human sees an obstacle. But a tube train runs in one dimension, on tracks. It also runs in specific tunnels, so the probability of obstructions is very low.
What you say about putting wires down the runway, or special street furniture etc is fine - that will work - and for that matter, planes could be simply towed to and from the runway by tug crews. But that is not computer vision, and you will still need pilots to 'conduct the flight', since they do rather more than taxi. Would you or your family fly in a pilotless aircraft?
A so-called autonomous car, even if the route is lined with copper wires or whatever, will still not be able to differentiate between a rubbish bag blowing into the road and a child chasing a ball, so it will have to emergency stop for anything it "sees", even a tumble weed, or a bird flying across the road, as they do.
Perhaps instead; a way forward to preventing horrendous airplane accidents would be to have live flight data monitoring?
If certain FDM parameters are significantly exceeded, or the profile looks badly wonky; a flight could be flagged up in real time and the chief pilot in their office could look at the flight parameters and have a direct communication channel to say to the crew, "er guys, what is going on here? You will go-around or immediately do x,y,z." etc.
Or maybe even something like the Apollo mission control?
What you say about putting wires down the runway, or special street furniture etc is fine - that will work - and for that matter, planes could be simply towed to and from the runway by tug crews. But that is not computer vision, and you will still need pilots to 'conduct the flight', since they do rather more than taxi. Would you or your family fly in a pilotless aircraft?
A so-called autonomous car, even if the route is lined with copper wires or whatever, will still not be able to differentiate between a rubbish bag blowing into the road and a child chasing a ball, so it will have to emergency stop for anything it "sees", even a tumble weed, or a bird flying across the road, as they do.
Perhaps instead; a way forward to preventing horrendous airplane accidents would be to have live flight data monitoring?
If certain FDM parameters are significantly exceeded, or the profile looks badly wonky; a flight could be flagged up in real time and the chief pilot in their office could look at the flight parameters and have a direct communication channel to say to the crew, "er guys, what is going on here? You will go-around or immediately do x,y,z." etc.
Or maybe even something like the Apollo mission control?
Last edited by Uplinker; 12th Jul 2020 at 07:52.
Even when the 707 was the Queen they managed to fly one via remote control, during a test on something to do with fire but I can't remember whether it was fuel safety or material flammability testing and that was in the 60s. There's been autothrottle forever, too. DC3s were equipped with autopilot. The point being is that for quite some time with technology today airplanes still are very far from being autonomous even after all of that time even though base technology for no pilot aircraft is intact is there a reason that we still haven't done it?
Edit: How could I forget to mention CAT III autoland?
What I really wanna see is a new more efficient supersonic airplane...with pilots.... the tech people are really barking up the wrong tree.
Edit: How could I forget to mention CAT III autoland?
What I really wanna see is a new more efficient supersonic airplane...with pilots.... the tech people are really barking up the wrong tree.
Last edited by Pugilistic Animus; 13th Jul 2020 at 01:40.
I have no doubt that some time in the future, we will have autonomous aircraft that are safer and more efficient than human piloted ones. However, we will have to completely change the way we certify things if ML/AI is involved. Maybe a LPC/OPC and LOE for Hal? At the moment I have little confidence in the state-of-the-art as we are only just starting to realise how complex the problems are and how fragile and narrow the competence of things like neural networks can be.
Also, 95% of my job as a pilot is interacting with other humans and trying to sort out their problems, which tends to get overlooked.
Also, 95% of my job as a pilot is interacting with other humans and trying to sort out their problems, which tends to get overlooked.
I believe that the London Circle tube line is driven by computers, but there is a human driver in the cab to operate the doors, and presumably to hit the emergency stop if the computer goes haywire or the human sees an obstacle. But a tube train runs in one dimension, on tracks. It also runs in specific tunnels, so the probability of obstructions is very low.
What you say about putting wires down the runway, or special street furniture etc is fine - that will work - and for that matter, planes could be simply towed to and from the runway by tug crews. But that is not computer vision, and you will still need pilots to 'conduct the flight', since they do rather more than taxi. Would you or your family fly in a pilotless aircraft?
A so-called autonomous car, even if the route is lined with copper wires or whatever, will still not be able to differentiate between a rubbish bag blowing into the road and a child chasing a ball, so it will have to emergency stop for anything it "sees", even a tumble weed, or a bird flying across the road, as they do.
Perhaps instead; a way forward to preventing horrendous airplane accidents would be to have live flight data monitoring?
If certain FDM parameters are significantly exceeded, or the profile looks badly wonky; a flight could be flagged up in real time and the chief pilot in their office could look at the flight parameters and have a direct communication channel to say to the crew, "er guys, what is going on here? You will go-around or immediately do x,y,z." etc.
Or maybe even something like the Apollo mission control?
What you say about putting wires down the runway, or special street furniture etc is fine - that will work - and for that matter, planes could be simply towed to and from the runway by tug crews. But that is not computer vision, and you will still need pilots to 'conduct the flight', since they do rather more than taxi. Would you or your family fly in a pilotless aircraft?
A so-called autonomous car, even if the route is lined with copper wires or whatever, will still not be able to differentiate between a rubbish bag blowing into the road and a child chasing a ball, so it will have to emergency stop for anything it "sees", even a tumble weed, or a bird flying across the road, as they do.
Perhaps instead; a way forward to preventing horrendous airplane accidents would be to have live flight data monitoring?
If certain FDM parameters are significantly exceeded, or the profile looks badly wonky; a flight could be flagged up in real time and the chief pilot in their office could look at the flight parameters and have a direct communication channel to say to the crew, "er guys, what is going on here? You will go-around or immediately do x,y,z." etc.
Or maybe even something like the Apollo mission control?
If absolute safety is a target (not that you will ever get it) you can argue that a plane should have dual control systems, one onboard and one on the ground. Working out a protocol as to which to use in the case of an emergency such as a suspected on board hijacking, or indeed of ground facilities and the communication system could be an interesting problem! Not to mention whether the pilot or ground controller is legally in command.
You could argue that if the car were invented today the historical system of obtaining driving licences would be considered totally inadequate. You might want to limit driving to say the top 50% of the population by aptitude and insist on overlaying onboard anti collision systems. All very hypothetical...
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Error bracket within any decent computer program today is much tighter than the same for us, humans. Full automation of flight ops is, therefore, inevitable. Better get used to it and let it go as soon as possible. Professions disappear all the time. This is part of our human evolution. Being pissed off about airline pilot vanishing it is like being pissed off about commercial sailing ships - for many centuries an economic backbone for most countries - having eventually become redundant.
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Error bracket within any decent computer program today is much tighter than the same for us, humans. Full automation of flight ops is, therefore, inevitable. Better get used to it and let it go as soon as possible. Professions disappear all the time. This is part of our human evolution. Being pissed off about airline pilot vanishing it is like being pissed off about commercial sailing ships - for many centuries an economic backbone for most countries - having eventually become redundant.
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Take a look at how many highly paid support technicians and equipment it takes to operate the Northrop Grumman Triton, or for that matter the plain old General Atomics family, Predator, etc., even discounting military specific hardware.
The dollars/flt hour will make your eyes bleed, and the Triton is currently the closest thing to autonomous operation levels that the airlines will need. All about how and where you do the required information processing, on or off board.
Two pilots/aircraft, minuscule cost compared to current autonomous operations, and nobody sees it getting any cheaper.
Thats one of the reasons autonomous military aircraft have fallen off the radar so to speak, less manpower/footprint is the groupthink right now.
A few demo sideshow programs will run, my bet is they peter out. Company’s like to sell what they demo, if not, it’s on to something else.
But I could be wrong.
The dollars/flt hour will make your eyes bleed, and the Triton is currently the closest thing to autonomous operation levels that the airlines will need. All about how and where you do the required information processing, on or off board.
Two pilots/aircraft, minuscule cost compared to current autonomous operations, and nobody sees it getting any cheaper.
Thats one of the reasons autonomous military aircraft have fallen off the radar so to speak, less manpower/footprint is the groupthink right now.
A few demo sideshow programs will run, my bet is they peter out. Company’s like to sell what they demo, if not, it’s on to something else.
But I could be wrong.
