Earlier quoted context omitted.
For us non-pilots: what is CAPS?
It's not a US/non-US thing, it's a Cirrus thing: a parachute. * https://cirrusaircraft.com/totalsafety/
That's "us" not "US".
Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
131–140 of 237 posts
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Engine failure on takeoff is tricky to deal with. See Sullenberger landing on the Hudson for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549
Isn't that a situation where a machine would excel? One challenge is the abundance of decisions with only one non-deadly option, the other challenge is lack of time. The first challenge is solved by well-defined decision trees and mental checklists, but those make the second challenge harder. Computers don't need to balance between checklist thoroughness and decision latency, they can look at all the data they have i…
No this isn't a situation where a machine would excel because it can't handle unexpected failure modes for which is hasn't been programmed. Human pilots can often come up with a "good enough" solution based on understanding fundamental principles without having any prior experience. For example, the pilots on US Airways flight 1549 intentionally changed and disregarded parts of the checklist for handling a dual engine failure because it wasn't a perfect fit for the actual conditions at the time.
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#133Sounds very similar to something Austin Meyer (creator of x-plane) implemented a few years ago called Xavion: http://xavion.com/
This is an ipad app that calculates a best glidepath to the best runway and guides you to the runway safely. It's intended for emergency situations when you lose an engine and quickly have to decide on an airport/runway. However, it sort of snowballed into an app with a lot of situational awareness features.
But he actually experimented with hooking that up to a plane at some point to create a self landing system: https://www.x-plane.com/2014/07/xavion-brings-a-real-world-a.... Not sure if he ever shipped that feature. I imagine there might be some certification hassle :-).
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've flown airplanes with solid GA plane autopilot that'll fly down to decision height, but you still have to put in flaps, gear, change throttle. To have an airplane do all that on its own is quite impressive, particularly to do a 'nearest' type input on a Garmin then to land it on the appropriate runway, still confuses me sometimes if its a new airport I've never been at. I'd be interested to know if it declares an…
It sets 7700 and broadcasts what's happening, incapacitated pilot is an emergency so that's what it will tell everybody. If there's a controller on frequency it's up to that controller what to do about it, but there's no use arguing with a machine and the pilot is incapacitated, so my expectation is that a controller will keep other traffic out of the way, and if the autoland has picked somewhere with a local tower t…
> they'd call that tower and give it heads up it has got an incoming emergency
No need:
> [Autoland] would update and broadcast that message every 30 seconds—listening to make sure that it didn’t transmit over any other radio calls. Once near the Class D airspace of the tower, it would have changed one of the radios to the tower frequency and kept the other on the emergency frequency.
Then, once landed, it will brake, and then broadcast that the runway is inop due to airplane on the runway.
Quite amazing.
https://www.aopa.org/News-and-Media/All-News/2020/January/Pi...
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
CAPS sounds great over open water or desert, but not so great over a populated area. At least a non-pilot co-passenger might want to try their luck gliding to open area and then pulling it.
A 20mph vertical impact into someone's roof really isn't the worst of outcomes.
Yeah, I don't think it would be any more catastrophic than a large tree crashing into the roof. It'll be messy and require extensive repairs, but you're not going to see a fireball and crater.
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#136This is a seriously impressive bit of software engineering. It seems as simple as "push a button" to the layman but what happens when: There is a thunderstorm between the airport and the runway The nearest runway is closed due to a blizzard There is a mountain between the normal 3-degree glide-slope and the runway, an "offset approach" There is a 40-knot crosswind You have an engine out That's just a few, I'm a comme…
No doubt this is real engineering. I'm sure they had to do a lot of software verification work.
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#137Sounds very similar to something Austin Meyer (creator of x-plane) implemented a few years ago called Xavion: http://xavion.com/ This is an ipad app that calculates a best glidepath to the best runway and guides you to the runway safely. It's intended for emergency situations when you lose an engine and quickly have to decide on an airport/runway. However, it sort of snowballed into an app with a lot of situational a…
Similar, but also kind of the opposite. Xavion is for when you have a functioning pilot, but a malfunctioning plane. Emergency Autoland is for when you have a functioning plane, but not a functioning pilot.
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#138This is a seriously impressive bit of software engineering. It seems as simple as "push a button" to the layman but what happens when: There is a thunderstorm between the airport and the runway The nearest runway is closed due to a blizzard There is a mountain between the normal 3-degree glide-slope and the runway, an "offset approach" There is a 40-knot crosswind You have an engine out That's just a few, I'm a comme…
It's just shortest path traversal no?
Represent each airport as a node in a graph with all relevant data (distance, weather, etc.) ... Traverse the graph and find the shortest path.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm
Easier said than done I'm sure ;)
Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#139$2.994M. Guess I'll just ride my bike then.
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Re: Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability
#140This is a seriously impressive bit of software engineering. It seems as simple as "push a button" to the layman but what happens when: There is a thunderstorm between the airport and the runway The nearest runway is closed due to a blizzard There is a mountain between the normal 3-degree glide-slope and the runway, an "offset approach" There is a 40-knot crosswind You have an engine out That's just a few, I'm a comme…
What kind tech stack/development processes do you think are needed for something like this?
At a very naive level, for example: typed language vs dynamic; formal verification of the code or not (or to what extent); what kind of QA? (can't even imagine how to test this "in production" given the amount of edge cases like the ones you describe; hw and sw redundancy; to name a few.
I have zero experience with airplane software but I find it fascinating considering how safe flying is.