Shower thought...

ppragman

ppragman

FLIPY FLAPS!
I had a "shower thought" today, and wondered what some controllers thought about it.

Pilots are dodgy on the issue of UAS right now. Unmanned flying machines make us nervous and concerned about our future usefulness. That said, I suspect that there'll be pilots flying around in airplanes for a long time due to the potential for malfunction, as well as the highly dynamic aspect of it, a bunch of jobs may go away, but there will always be a human in direct control when there are people being carried on board - I don't think that'll change in my life time. Then a thought crossed my mind - what about controllers? I can ask my phone for directions and knows what I mean. When (not if) the software gets good enough to truly converse with a human being, when will ATC jobs start being outsourced to computers too? I can picture a world where all the routine operations are handled by the computer and those are broadcast out as audio, and any time something out of the ordinary pops up (emergency, change of destination or routing change, etc) , the human gets pulled into the discussion to confirm it. Is that something you guys are talking about?
 
I think a compute program can likely take over a controllers role in a number of tasks today in the enroute environment. There is already conflict probe being used through URET/EDST that shows potential conflicts long range, a simple computer program can be written to resolve these conflicts. Problem with these probes is they are really only accurate in a cruise vs cruise stage of flight, on route and not deviating. This is why the oceanic system Ocean 21 (ATOP) works very good as well. It is designed for all aircraft in cruise flight, makes it simple to calculate conflicts and detect them. A program could be written to send out a CPDLC message or HF to climb/descend to fix the conflict. When you get into opposite direction climbing/descending, military flights doing all sorts of things, and sequencing to final, I don't think anyone has successfully shown a computer model can nail it as accurate as the human. I think we will see computers take over a lot of the tasks, such as frequency changes, CPDLC over the ocean already does automatic comm changes at the boundary, we will see that domestically across the US in the future i am sure. I think until you combine unmanned planes with computer controllers it won't be a fully computer operated environment. You would need the computer program to constantly be sending adjustments and turns into the cockpit, these systems would need to talk to each other seamlessly for a nice turn to final, while knowing about all other traffic in the area, I think one huge NAS program could do it, the NAS computer would then process all flight data and control each flight, taking humans out of it, it decides when to launch an aircraft, knowing its exact slot to get from point a to point b with no delays. It controls each flight to provide the spacing and slow downs to ensure good spacing, like the automated trains at the airports. I don't think until every flight is integrated into such a system that you can remove humans from the process. Throw in emergencies and weather and all bets are off that any computer model would be able to keep up. You might just end up spinning in circles, oh wait that happens today anyways!! It would be a massive undertaking, and giving the ability of the FAA to implement new software and programs, it would likely be a 100 billion dollar waste of money as it failed.
 
wut's URET? My radar sectors still use strips. I am an Ocean 21 controller, it is a useful tool for determining traffic situations, but even it cannot apply all the rules available. An entirely computer controlled system would never work because computers can't think creatively. I don't think the FAA will ever approve unmanned operations for anything that would require a commercial certificate.
 
FM_Weasel said:
It's just not like those good ol' days is it, queeno?
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good old days my ASS its basic ATC , if you cant figure out you got two coming together by using your friggen radar and you need URET to tell you you shouldn't be in this career field!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!....... I told ya don't get me started ;)
 
Its uncanny how many times URET shows "green" (no conflict) and you run out the sticks and they are wired. Ya i guess were ready for computers to start doing ATC. You guys did see how well the gov't ran computer system did with the Obama care launch right.
 
We are talking about it. The current software might not be much of a step toward ATC automation, but just as for pilots, removing the humans seems at least plausible now. Probably not in my lifetime, and hey, if they privatize us and Raytheon wins the low bid, we'll be working for small enough peanuts it won't even be worth it to replace us!
 
I laugh at people who think computers are even remotely close to doing the job

Literally, I point and laugh.

I work for one if the most technologically advanced ANS providers in the world, and we are not even remotely close to such an environment.

TCAS balks at situations with more than two planes, and has trouble keeping up.

Having situations with three or four planes in conflict is routine work for ATC, then mix in the idea of efficiency, there's no computer program in the world which could get it all right and be as safe, not yet anyway.

Programmers always look at it from an analytical point of view. It just isn't as simple as a calculation, it just isn't.
 
queeno said:
good old days my ASS its basic ATC , if you cant figure out you got two coming together by using your friggen radar and you need URET to tell you you shouldn't be in this career field!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!....... I told ya don't get me started ;)
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It sure isn't hard to spot those who rely on it!
 
Bernoulli Fan said:
We are talking about it. The current software might not be much of a step toward ATC automation, but just as for pilots, removing the humans seems at least plausible now. Probably not in my lifetime, and hey, if they privatize us and Raytheon wins the low bid, we'll be working for small enough peanuts it won't even be worth it to replace us!
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Just to play the devils advocate, most private ANS providers around the world, pay better and have more time off than the FAA does now.
 
canadian_atc said:
Just to play the devils advocate, most private ANS providers around the world, pay better and have more time off than the FAA does now.
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True....but here in the US all we have seen of contracting out parts of the system is what happened to the level 1 VFR towers and how screwed up the FSS system got after Lockmart took over (nothing like driving away half of your customers the first year with piss poor service). so you can see how we are not so happy happy joy joy about it. as screwed up as the FFA is at least I know my enemy, its like the old saying "ill just stay with the date I came with".
 
Ozelot said:
And lockmart is chomping at the bit to have responsibility for the NAS, another terrible idea.
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I hear you brother, if Lockmart got there greedy little hands on the US ATC system all I can say to all my controller brothers and sisters is to have a good supply of Banana flavored anal ease !!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I was in no way saying anything today comes close to providing real time conflict resolution...nor do i use any of those tools to separate traffic. Just saying with enough money it possibly could be done. But who wants to pay a trillion dollars to do what they are paying controllers to do today.
 
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