By 2030, commercial passengers will routinely fly in pilotlessplanes.

Neil Gould wrote:
....
All that has happened is that the pilot is outside the cockpit. The UAVs
are *not* acting autonomously, which is a pre-requisite for _pilotless_
operation.


Right. The SALT II treaty forbids dropping weapons or launching
vehicles from _pilotless_ vehicles. But _remotely piloted_ vehicles do
not violate this restriction.

In article ,
says...


I was talking about autonomous operation. It doesn't matter where that is.


The thread is about airline operations without pilots. Not about
philosophical considerations of autonomous operation.


Now, imagine you have full control of all variables.

No point, because that's never the case.


If you're building an airport it is . . .

Recently, Greg Farris posted:

says...


I was talking about autonomous operation. It doesn't matter where
that is.


The thread is about airline operations without pilots. Not about
philosophical considerations of autonomous operation.

And, my point is that you won't have pilotless airline operations without
autonomous capabilities. It isn't a philosophical matter because the
evidence of today's capabilities is pretty clear. If you wish to suggest
otherwise, show some proof that it works in any kind of vehicle, anywhere.
The difference between autopilots and autonomous airline operations is
pretty significant.

Regards,

Neil

In article ,
says...


The thread is about airline operations without pilots. Not about
philosophical considerations of autonomous operation.

And, my point is that you won't have pilotless airline operations without
autonomous capabilities. It isn't a philosophical matter because the
evidence of today's capabilities is pretty clear. If you wish to suggest
otherwise, show some proof that it works in any kind of vehicle, anywhere.
The difference between autopilots and autonomous airline operations is
pretty significant.

Regards,


I notice that this thread is cross posted to different newsgroups. Perhaps
you are contributing from alt.rec.metaphysics or something :-)

You are hung up on the idea of autonomous operation, when that wasn't the
point at all. Flying airliners without pilots does not imply that they have
to fly themselves without human intervention. To most of us, it means they
are controlled from the ground, with a level of human supervision and
intervention scaled to the complexity of the task. This means, as you say,
the pilot is not physically in the airplane. It also means that one 'pilot'
(human or otherwise) can manage several airliners, and moreover manage
conflict between them better than any one pilot in any one airplane could
do.

To you, if I understand you correctly, this doesn't pass muster, because it
is not true autonomous operation. the planes are not making any decisions
by themselves, or very few. This, however, was not the point of the initial
thread, which was only concerned with removing costly, error-prone pilots
from airliners.

Perhaps you are not involved in aviation, or not aware of how the system is
organized. By the time a plane takes off, under an IFR flight plan, its
route has been scheduled, and the airspace is progressively cleared of all
conflicts. The FMS in the plane is programmed for the entire route, and it
is rare to have to deviate from this program. During the approach phase
though, significant decision making and clearance modifications are often
necessary - but the are buffers (holding patterns) built in, which machines
fly better than people anyway. If the air traffic control system (human or
machine) had the authority to write directly into the aircraft's FMS, then
the entire flight could be managed without a pilot, and would be less error
prone than the current system. We don't do so today for reasons of
responsibility - socially, legally and administratively it is not
acceptable today to remove this responsibility from the pilots.
Technically, it would not be a big step, and it does not involve artificial
intelligence.

My argument is that socially, this is not something we would accept today,
and I believe there are significant hurdles that argue against the initial
premise, which is that within 25 years we will all be flying in planes
without pilots.

G Faris

Recently, Greg Farris posted:

says...


The thread is about airline operations without pilots. Not about
philosophical considerations of autonomous operation.

And, my point is that you won't have pilotless airline operations
without autonomous capabilities. It isn't a philosophical matter
because the evidence of today's capabilities is pretty clear. If you
wish to suggest otherwise, show some proof that it works in any kind
of vehicle, anywhere. The difference between autopilots and
autonomous airline operations is pretty significant.


I notice that this thread is cross posted to different newsgroups.
Perhaps you are contributing from alt.rec.metaphysics or something :-)

Perhaps you're contributing from alt.rec.dream-on? ;-)

You are hung up on the idea of autonomous operation, when that wasn't
the point at all. Flying airliners without pilots does not imply that
they have to fly themselves without human intervention. To most of
us, it means they are controlled from the ground, with a level of
human supervision and intervention scaled to the complexity of the
task. This means, as you say, the pilot is not physically in the
airplane. It also means that one 'pilot' (human or otherwise) can
manage several airliners, and moreover manage conflict between them
better than any one pilot in any one airplane could do.

Well, this is a shift to a slightly different approach, and adds both
complexity and unnecessary risk.

To you, if I understand you correctly, this doesn't pass muster,
because it is not true autonomous operation. the planes are not
making any decisions by themselves, or very few. This, however, was
not the point of the initial thread, which was only concerned with
removing costly, error-prone pilots from airliners.

Your system of having remote pilots *increases* the potential for errors.
How many screens will the pilot have to watch to replace the simple task
of scanning (this isn't as simple as it sounds, either)? And, you want to
have one guy managing more than one flight? At the very least, this is not
likely to improve the loss rate, which would more than offset the cost of
the pilot's salary. Add to that the expense of maintaining the requisite
systems, and it's easy to see that the cost of operation would be higher,
not lower than today. How much will an A&P with a computer science degree
cost?

Perhaps you are not involved in aviation, or not aware of how the
system is organized.

The FAA is satisfied that I am involved in aviation by virtue of a
certificate and current medical. And, I pass my checkrides without
problems, so I suppose I understand, at least to some degree, how "the
system is organized". ;-)

By the time a plane takes off, under an IFR
flight plan, its route has been scheduled, and the airspace is
progressively cleared of all conflicts.

Except for such things as developing weather (see the thread about XM
weather / Garmin 396), which is why we still have PIREPS, for example.

In short, *I* won't be flying on any airliner where the pilot is not on
board.

Neil

Greg Farris wrote:


I notice that this thread is cross posted to different newsgroups. Perhaps
you are contributing from alt.rec.metaphysics or something :-)

You are hung up on the idea of autonomous operation, when that wasn't the
point at all. Flying airliners without pilots does not imply that they have
to fly themselves without human intervention. To most of us, it means they
are controlled from the ground, with a level of human supervision and
intervention scaled to the complexity of the task. This means, as you say,
the pilot is not physically in the airplane. It also means that one 'pilot'
(human or otherwise) can manage several airliners, and moreover manage
conflict between them better than any one pilot in any one airplane could
do.

To you, if I understand you correctly, this doesn't pass muster, because it
is not true autonomous operation. the planes are not making any decisions
by themselves, or very few. This, however, was not the point of the initial
thread, which was only concerned with removing costly, error-prone pilots
from airliners.


So you want to remove error prone pilot from the aircraft and put him on
the ground in charge of several aircrafts?

Greg Farris wrote:
snip

My argument is that socially, this is not something we would accept today,
and I believe there are significant hurdles that argue against the initial
premise, which is that within 25 years we will all be flying in planes
without pilots.

G Faris

Well thought out and presented Greg...certainly food for
thought...
--

-Gord.
(use gordon in email)

Greg Farris writes:

You are hung up on the idea of autonomous operation, when that wasn't the
point at all. Flying airliners without pilots does not imply that they have
to fly themselves without human intervention. To most of us, it means they
are controlled from the ground, with a level of human supervision and
intervention scaled to the complexity of the task. This means, as you say,
the pilot is not physically in the airplane. It also means that one 'pilot'
(human or otherwise) can manage several airliners, and moreover manage
conflict between them better than any one pilot in any one airplane could
do.

Okay, let's accept that this system is built. What happens when
communication is interrupted? Radio failure is not an unheard of
event, is it?

In the case of communication failure, it would appear that you have
two choices. You could have the planes automatically go into a
holding pattern of some sort, or you could have the planes act
autonomously. If you went into a holding pattern, the planes would
have to be able to break out of the holding pattern and land
autonomously if they ran low on fuel or detected incoming weather.

Having a pilot on the ground remotely controlling the plane does not
remove the need for autonomous operation -- it just means that the
autonomous operation is only used during unusual situations. I
believe that handling these unusual situations are exactly parts of
the autonomous controller which will be the most difficult to design
correctly.

So, you are left with two choices: 1. Try to design a communication
system which is so robust that communication failure is virtually
impossible; or 2. Include some sort of autonomous system as a backup
for when communication fails.

Do I think this is impossible? No. Do I think it is quite hard to
get right? Yes. It certainly will take quite some time to get this
right enough to win the trust of the average passenger.

Chris
--
Chris Colohan Email: PGP: finger
Web: www.colohan.com Phone: (412)268-4751

Recently, Chris Colohan posted:
[...]

So, you are left with two choices: 1. Try to design a communication
system which is so robust that communication failure is virtually
impossible; or 2. Include some sort of autonomous system as a backup
for when communication fails.

Do I think this is impossible? No. Do I think it is quite hard to
get right? Yes. It certainly will take quite some time to get this
right enough to win the trust of the average passenger.

I completely agree, but as I wrote earlier, by the time this idea is even
a remote possibility, we'll have all kinds of autonomous machines running
around us, and we'll take it in stride.

Neil

Neil Gould wrote:
Recently, Chris Colohan posted:
[...]

So, you are left with two choices: 1. Try to design a communication
system which is so robust that communication failure is virtually
impossible; or 2. Include some sort of autonomous system as a backup
for when communication fails.

Do I think this is impossible? No. Do I think it is quite hard to
get right? Yes. It certainly will take quite some time to get this
right enough to win the trust of the average passenger.

I completely agree, but as I wrote earlier, by the time this idea is even
a remote possibility, we'll have all kinds of autonomous machines running
around us, and we'll take it in stride.

I see that they ran the 'robot/remote controlled ground vehicle trials
again and some actually completed the course.
If they're that unreliable on the ground where you can stop and rectify
faults I don't think the possibility of pilots being removed from the
cockpit is going to arise...