By 2030, commercial passengers will routinely fly in pilotlessplanes.

"Orval Fairbairn" wrote in message news:
That makes two subjects you confirm knowing nothing about. But, anyway,
name some piloting challenges that can never be solved by computers.

And -- it confirms that "Happy Dog" knows nothing about aviation!

Your musings about chess weren't exactly genius.

1. stuck landing gear.
2. identifying asymmetric flap extension.
3. wake turbulence.
4. hijackers.
5. midair collisions.
6. birdstrikes.
7. lightning strikes (EMP will play havoc with the computer).
8. ice.
9. catastrophic engine failure.

Nothing above is inherently impossible for a non-meat computer to handle.
Pick a couple and explain why if you feel differently.

moo

With seniority and overtime, you'd be surprised at what city bus drivers
make. They drive Hummers and Lexus' - I drive a Ford Taurus.

Once the airlines get pilots' salaries down to bus driver levels, the

Given the recent crash near Athens, Greece, and the Payne Stewart LearJet
incident... I'd say we have a long ways to go.


"Bob Fry" wrote in message
...
Not my statement. See
http://www.longbets.org/4

What sayeth the group wisdom? I think eventually there will be
pilotless aircraft, the question is when.

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote:

This reminds me of a movie I watched some time ago. Can't remember
which one, could have been 'Right Stuff'. The aircraft was designed to
fly without pilots, but for some reason they elected to have pilots in
the aircraft. But there were no windows for the pilots. So, the pilots
vehemently objected to it, and wanted to hand fly the aircraft. Then I
think there was some discussion of putting a monkey in the aircraft
instead of pilots. Any way, in the end the pilots won, and they had to
redesign everything with windows and controls.

The movie title is correct, however the cited example referred not to an
aircraft but to the first manned American spacecraft, the Mercury capsule.


Greetings,
Markus

Arketip wrote:
Andrew Sarangan wrote:

The human analog of your question is a pilot becoming unconsicous
during flight. Yes, we have a backup pilot, but there is no reason why
we can't put MANY backup computers and backup power sources.

Computers will never be fool proof, but they can be more reliable than
humans, especially in repetitive tasks. Like it or not, flying is a
repetitive task.

Have you ever flown one of the new state of the art aircraft?

7 times out of 10 when you start up the aircraft you get some kind of
nuisance message or glitch, and like any computer you just go with the
old Control Alt Delete routine.
There are still too many computer glitches to even think to have
aircrafts without pilots.

The 70% failure rate is quite alarming. Have you discussed this with
the designers? What do they have to say about it?

In any case, I am sure a similar discussion once took place about
navigators in the cockpit. Present day computer technology is quite
capable of coming up with a pilotless aircraft. The technology is
here; it is a matter of correctly implementing it. However, to allay
fears, the first step will be a single-pilot aircraft, which I believe
is not too far in the future.

Recently, Peter Duniho posted:

"Bob Noel" wrote in message
...
What we don't have is the ability to formally prove the correctness
of software.

We DO have the ability to prove "correct enough". That is, we have
engineering strategies designed to ensure correctness to some given
degree. These are the same techniques that were used for the space
shuttle computers (though, unfortunately, not for recent unmanned
space probes), and similar techniques are used for existing
automation in aviation.

It's true that we don't have mathematical proofs for correctness. Of
course, it's widely believed we may never be able to have that. But
physical engineering suffers from similar limitations, and it seems
to get by just fine. Theoretical design can always be undermined by
human implementation, but there is an idea of "good enough" in both
types of engineering. You simply design in assumptions of human
failure of implementation.

I don't see this as a fundamental barrier to pilotless airliners.

In the same vein, piloted airliners are "good enough". The number of
catastrophic losses are quite small in comparison to the number of
flights. There is no evidence that aircraft piloted by computer would fare
any better, much less signficantly better.

As I see it, the question isn't whether a computer can fly an airplane
from A to B, but whether it can handle the unanticipated problem
successfully. This amounts to being able to anticipate the opportunities
to fail, and the possibilities extend well beyond the ability to predict
them (the DARPA land XC example demonstrates that this may be an issue).
While computer-piloted aircraft may eventually be able to succeed "most of
the time", human-piloted aircraft have done so for quite some time. So, I
question the benefits of such an effort.

Neil

As far as high jacking: I think that a pilotless plane would be more
secure. The designers could put in a code or something and make it
impossible for a hi-jacker to take control of the plane.

Of course he could still blow the damn thing up in mid-flight, but he
wouldn't be able to fly it into the WTC or such.

wrote:

As far as high jacking: I think that a pilotless plane would be more
secure. The designers could put in a code or something and make it
impossible for a hi-jacker to take control of the plane.

Given the demonstrated abilities of hackers, I think it might make hijacking easier.

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.

George Patterson wrote:

wrote:

As far as high jacking: I think that a pilotless plane would be more
secure. The designers could put in a code or something and make it
impossible for a hi-jacker to take control of the plane.


Given the demonstrated abilities of hackers, I think it might make
hijacking easier.



Quote

Then instead of having 3 or 4 hijackers taking 1 aircraft, we will have
1 Hacker taking over several aircrafts and flying them wherever he wants

"Neil Gould" wrote in message
...
In the same vein, piloted airliners are "good enough". The number of
catastrophic losses are quite small in comparison to the number of
flights. There is no evidence that aircraft piloted by computer would fare
any better, much less signficantly better.

What would you consider "evidence"? It's not like we've got airliners
without pilots that we can use for comparison. There's no question
automation would avoid certain kinds of losses; the valid question (without
an answer for the moment) is whether human pilots balance that out with
actions that a computerized pilot could not take.

I am sure the pilots' unions will invest great resources in showing that
human pilots are better. But I'd just as soon see an independent source for
that analysis.

Saying "there is no evidence" may be true, but it doesn't answer the
question. It simply describes the current lack of information.

As far as "good enough" goes, that's a social issue. For the time being,
I'd agree things are "good enough", especially the distrust that the public
would have with an fully automated airliner. But long-term, airlines are
looking at two things, at least:

* Overall loss rate
* Cost of operations

Both of these affect their bottom line, and if they can save money by using
airliners without human pilots, they will. They will, of course, have to
take into account the effect making that change will have on ridership. But
if the airliners can convince the public that taking the human out of the
equation is safer, that won't be an issue.

Pete