Planes without pilots - NYT

I work at an oil sands plant and its a complex operation. There is no question and no dispute that the place is designed to shut down, its not designed to run. There is so so so much safety built in to the process, that one little tiny thing can cause the whole plant to trip and just stop. There is instrumentation reading all kinds of variables that will initiate a shut down if those variables become out of control. Yet, my job is still legislated because even though this thing can run it self, it can't. Valves fail, motors fail, there are runaway process conditions that are caused by the automation logic itself, pipes burst, fires, water hammer, steam hammer, you name it. It happens. And usually when it does the control logic makes it worse, therefore, the government mandates that I, and other people with the same trade have to be there because were smarter than the automation. Because every time theres a problem, its either a routine one, new one with a few twists, or a problem we've never seen before and will never see ever again, the computers are not smart enough to figure that out. Humans still have to intervene.

So, I think its wayyyyy to early to see pilotless or single pilot airliners. Yes, you can program automation for lots of different situations, but never every situation. And some situations you will only ever see once. The only thing I see happening is maybe more automation. But even then, we will have to intervene at some points due to the computers inability to control whatever is going on thats undesirable. So until computers and automation can become as good and better than us at decision making, and its proven, we'll still be up front.
 
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ATN_Pilot said:
You keep thinking about how easy things are when everything goes according to plan. Yes, an FMS and autoflight system can do a (pretty) good job of flying an airplane without pilot input when everything is going rosy. But most autoland systems can't even land on a single engine after you've got everything stable and trimmed for it. Hell, most autoland systems can't even land with a strong crosswind on two engines. And ask a 737 pilot how great the autoland is even when things are smooth and perfect.

Sorry, but computers are great at following magenta lines. That's about it. Throw in an engine failure at V1, and the technology is still a couple of decades away for the automation to handle that with a pilot sitting there keeping an eye on it. You guys thinking that we can hand over control of airliners to computers anytime in the next 30 years are living in a dream world and probably don't have much experience flying airliners.
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I don't disagree with any of that. I'm just saying building a self driving car is even harder.
 
Hmm, well, I have been actually writing software for the past few weeks. Software that just replaced a human engineer (had not occurred to the customer that it was something that was feasible to automate).

This particular customer is in the business of supplying the sensors and processors and such for driverless cars. It is already going to be multi billion dollar business in the next year or so. Substantial investment is happening now.

It will be a short time before it happens to airplanes too. It will happen.
 
ATN_Pilot said:
You clearly have very little understanding of how regulators work. Perhaps you should do a little research into how the railroads want to go down to a single engineer on their most advanced trains, but the rail regulators won't allow it. And you know what? The railroads are probably right that it's just as safe (unlike in this case). But the regulators don't care, because they want to see mountains of evidence proving it first. I give it 20 years until they'll approve even that. I'd give it at least 60 until you see a single pilot airliner, over a century before a zero pilot airliner is even a remote possibility.
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I sincerely hope you're right sir.
 
RDoug said:
It took a human pilot to make the decision that an Airbus wasn't going to make Teterboro, and that the Hudson River was the only real option. A computer would never have come to that conclusion because it would have been programmed to only accept a runway as a suitable landing site.
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In theory a well programmed machine would discard TEB right away. Programming a machine to go to the nearest unobstructed flat space within the gliding range is simple, the decision can be made much faster than any human and be accurate -as long as the code makes sense and the data supplied is accurate the output is going to be spot on.
The problem I see, is the computers inability to improvise, and until this is resolved , a computer is nothing more than a set of switches.Fortunately , the engineers understand how a fully predictable system will fail in an unpredictable situation, so for now they like the idea of a Bigger Brother (or two) in the cockpit, keeping an eye on Big Brother.

Technology is getting there , faster computers are now able to work out the matrices required to move in human like fashion real time :


But if you fear humans are inferior do not. Take look at this:
 
Soku39 said:
No really, it was a nice run ya'll

http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/32v00a/the_x47b_performs_worlds_first_unmanned_aerial/
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It's a pretty awesome technology demonstrator, but the purpose of military UAV's is fundamentally different than what passenger airliners are intended for; military UAV's keep American service members out of harms way.

So the technology exists to fly an aircraft remotely. Great. We've got the technology to do LOTS of things. How about a moon base? We've had that technology since 1976, and it's called the Ohio Class Ballistic Missile Submarine.

7192-4095.jpg


Or, if you work at Delta, the Soviet Typhoon Class Ballistic Missile Submarine.

WHpCSNa9_400x400.jpeg


Sound far fetched? These things are water proof and air tight, and if I had to guess, would have no problems surviving on the surface of the moon.

So all you need to do is take a 17,000 ton object and put it in orbit. If it costs $1,000 per pound to launch something into space, then it's easy math: $3.4 billion in order to launch a giant hunk of metal into orbit and send it toward the moon. All you need is about the largest rocket in the history of mankind:

8xGoth-OnPad.jpg


Nasa's budget is $18.4 billion, so launching an object of this weight into orbit is no problem at all. We have the technology, we have the funding, we can build it.

But we won't.

All problems, in the end, are political, and no political body (I.E. the citizens of the United States) is going to say "Hey, you know what sounds awesome? Taking an ailing Sean Connery and putting him on the moon! OH AND GUESS WHAT!!!!! WE CAN EVEN MAKE HIM WEAR THAT STUPID LOOKING HAT!!!!"

We have the technology to have airliners drive themselves, but we won't use it because we don't trust computers. We don't let computers drive trains, and the only choice a train has is to go faster or slower. If we don't trust a computer to operate an object that doesn't carry any passengers and can't even turn, then we're not going to trust a computer to a plane load of passengers.

Will. Not. Happen.

Technology demonstrators are amazing, but they're just that; demonstrators. Single pilot airliner cockpits? We're going to see that happen. But having NOBODY up front who has skin in the game when things to pear shaped? We could do it right now, but we've chosen not to.
 
jtrain609 said:
It's a pretty awesome technology demonstrator, but the purpose of military UAV's is fundamentally different than what passenger airliners are intended for; military UAV's keep American service members out of harms way.

So the technology exists to fly an aircraft remotely. Great. We've got the technology to do LOTS of things. How about a moon base? We've had that technology since 1976, and it's called the Ohio Class Ballistic Missile Submarine.

Sound far fetched? These things are water proof and air tight, and if I had to guess, would have no problems surviving on the surface of the moon.
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I believe you need a bunch of water for cooling the reactor systems which sustain all the electrical and systems power. I don't know if that's a totally closed-loop system or not. The rest of the crew logistics/replenishment is a different logistics/economics issue.

However - the better point you were making is that yes, we have the tech (and have had, for a long time) the tech to put a pressure vessel and crew on the moon. The issues we're facing aren't really technical.

So all you need to do is take a 17,000 ton object and put it in orbit. If it costs $1,000 per pound to launch something into space, then it's easy math: $3.4 billion in order to launch a giant hunk of metal into orbit and send it toward the moon. All you need is about the largest rocket in the history of mankind:
Click to expand...

It's actually $10,000 per kilo right now, according to a friend at SpaceX. You're gonna need more cheddar...

We have the technology, we have the funding, we can build it.

But we won't.

All problems, in the end, are political, and no political body (I.E. the citizens of the United States) is going to say "Hey, you know what sounds awesome? Taking an ailing Sean Connery and putting him on the moon! OH AND GUESS WHAT!!!!! WE CAN EVEN MAKE HIM WEAR THAT STUPID LOOKING HAT!!!!"
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Heh. All true.

Technology demonstrators are amazing, but they're just that; demonstrators. Single pilot airliner cockpits? We're going to see that happen. But having NOBODY up front who has skin in the game when things to pear shaped? We could do it right now, but we've chosen not to.
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Yes. As in most large endeavors, it's more a matter of will than anything else.
 
killbilly said:
I believe you need a bunch of water for cooling the reactor systems which sustain all the electrical and systems power. I don't know if that's a totally closed-loop system or not. The rest of the crew logistics/replenishment is a different logistics/economics issue.
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They used water because the ship is surrounded by it. Space is pretty cold too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_space#Fission_systems

It's actually $10,000 per kilo right now, according to a friend at SpaceX. You're gonna need more cheddar...
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You are correct, I went with SpaceX's predictions.

http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/spacex-breaking-the-1000-per-pound-launch-cost-barrier
 
drunkenbeagle said:
Hmm, well, I have been actually writing software for the past few weeks. Software that just replaced a human engineer (had not occurred to the customer that it was something that was feasible to automate).

This particular customer is in the business of supplying the sensors and processors and such for driverless cars. It is already going to be multi billion dollar business in the next year or so. Substantial investment is happening now.

It will be a short time before it happens to airplanes too. It will happen.
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As soon as driverless cars can make it over Loveland pass during a blizzard, I'll take this seriously.
 
jtrain609 said:
They used water because the ship is surrounded by it. Space is pretty cold too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_space#Fission_systems



You are correct, I went with SpaceX's predictions.

http://www.buildtheenterprise.org/spacex-breaking-the-1000-per-pound-launch-cost-barrier
Click to expand...

Space is cold until it ain't - the truth is if you were exposed to vacuum in space, your body would take a long time to cool off versus on earth because there's no convection. The real problem with parking a submarine in space is that you don't have any radiative cooling. They need the water for cooling or a giant freaking radiator to cool down the reactor.

They also use water for drinking.
 
jtrain609 said:
It's a pretty awesome technology demonstrator, but the purpose of military UAV's is fundamentally different than what passenger airliners are intended for; military UAV's keep American service members out of harms way.

So the technology exists to fly an aircraft remotely. Great. We've got the technology to do LOTS of things. How about a moon base? We've had that technology since 1976, and it's called the Ohio Class Ballistic Missile Submarine.

7192-4095.jpg


Or, if you work at Delta, the Soviet Typhoon Class Ballistic Missile Submarine.

WHpCSNa9_400x400.jpeg


Sound far fetched? These things are water proof and air tight, and if I had to guess, would have no problems surviving on the surface of the moon.

So all you need to do is take a 17,000 ton object and put it in orbit. If it costs $1,000 per pound to launch something into space, then it's easy math: $3.4 billion in order to launch a giant hunk of metal into orbit and send it toward the moon. All you need is about the largest rocket in the history of mankind:

8xGoth-OnPad.jpg


Nasa's budget is $18.4 billion, so launching an object of this weight into orbit is no problem at all. We have the technology, we have the funding, we can build it.

But we won't.

All problems, in the end, are political, and no political body (I.E. the citizens of the United States) is going to say "Hey, you know what sounds awesome? Taking an ailing Sean Connery and putting him on the moon! OH AND GUESS WHAT!!!!! WE CAN EVEN MAKE HIM WEAR THAT STUPID LOOKING HAT!!!!"

We have the technology to have airliners drive themselves, but we won't use it because we don't trust computers. We don't let computers drive trains, and the only choice a train has is to go faster or slower. If we don't trust a computer to operate an object that doesn't carry any passengers and can't even turn, then we're not going to trust a computer to a plane load of passengers.

Will. Not. Happen.

Technology demonstrators are amazing, but they're just that; demonstrators. Single pilot airliner cockpits? We're going to see that happen. But having NOBODY up front who has skin in the game when things to pear shaped? We could do it right now, but we've chosen not to.
Click to expand...

Will Not. Happen?


Never is a long time. 500 years from now you think there will be a pilot in an airliner? Will we even have airliners in the way we know them then?
 
RDoug said:
It took a human pilot to make the decision that an Airbus wasn't going to make Teterboro, and that the Hudson River was the only real option. A computer would never have come to that conclusion because it would have been programmed to only accept a runway as a suitable landing site.

I'll stick with a human pilot making the decision only a human would make.
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Good post. I wonder if the designers would take that into factor. Either way, I still see all aircraft at least being monitored by humans.
 
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