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FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics

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Re: FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics

#21

Post by godelski »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #5

Frankly the tech for autonomous aviation has been around for a while now. I expect even strong crosswind landings will soon be better handled by a computer than a pilot. But then here’s the problem... Autonomous systems are great when things are going well, but at the end of the day they fare very poorly in edge cases sometimes with catastrophic results. When you’re driving a car you usually follow traffic rules and…

It's not the mistakes that matter, it's the proportion. Pareto says most cases should be ordinary, so looks like we got that covered. The question is given x amount of flight hours under likely ranges of events, who does better and by how much.

If the human can perform better in niche situations but not better in ordinary then that may lead to an overall decrease in crashes or loss of cargo (the metrics we actually care about). If the human only performs slightly better, well it makes sense to switch to autonomous because humans are expensive, especially when things go wrong.

The point is that no one expects the machine to be perfect. You can get caught up in the "well it can't handle x well" all day, but that's missing the forest for the trees. A robot isn't going to get frustrated if you only fly it on VFR days and ground it for 20 hours in Little Rock because weather changed.

Re: FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics

#22

Post by hanniabu »

liability wrote: post #12
alfalfasprout wrote: post #5

Frankly the tech for autonomous aviation has been around for a while now. I expect even strong crosswind landings will soon be better handled by a computer than a pilot. But then here’s the problem... Autonomous systems are great when things are going well, but at the end of the day they fare very poorly in edge cases sometimes with catastrophic results. When you’re driving a car you usually follow traffic rules and…

Along these lines, would an autopilot ever think of landing in the Hudson? (Particularly if it hadn't been done before?)

Devil's advocate: Would a human pilot be skilled and lucky enough to pull this off a second time?

Re: FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics

#23

Post by ceejayoz »

evanlivingston wrote: post #20
ceejayoz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a cargo plane, not a buzzy quadcopter drone. They already fly these routes; they just use human pilots to do so.

And they're already loud. If they proliferate, whether human operated or autonomous, the noise will increase. +1 vote for heavily regulating noise pollution.

Noise pollution from airports is regulated. Many airports have departure patterns that avoid areas sensitive to noise.

Drones are going to need similar regulation, I agree.

Re: FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics

#24

Post by GhostVII »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #5

Frankly the tech for autonomous aviation has been around for a while now. I expect even strong crosswind landings will soon be better handled by a computer than a pilot. But then here’s the problem... Autonomous systems are great when things are going well, but at the end of the day they fare very poorly in edge cases sometimes with catastrophic results. When you’re driving a car you usually follow traffic rules and…

I think the best case scenario is to have an autonomous system that only steps in when the human pilot is doing something wrong. Then the pilots stay well-trained, while getting the benefits of autopilot. You could then manually give autopilot control for short periods in times when it is too dangerous for human pilots, ex. windy dark landings.

Re: FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics

#25

Post by gpm »

java-man wrote: post #8
gpm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was doing this I would start with remotely "piloting" (sending instructions to) them and having the remote pilot communicate with ATC via the traditional radio channel.

Right, but that requires a fairly reliable radio link (that we don't have, e.g. MH370). Or perhaps a set of dedicated routes, with ATC actively routing other traffic around the robots?

So get one. Partner with SpaceX or oneweb and plot courses only where you will have continuous connectivity.

We pilot drones in warzones remotely, the technology exists to pilot then in peace time.

Re: FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics

#26

Post by keehun »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #9
keehun wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be quite a feat without updating the quality of the voice transmissions. When you listen to some recordings of ATC, it becomes clear pretty quickly that context clues is paramount to being able to communicate with ATC. Some of the transmissions are so difficult to hear it amazes me that humans can even communicate through it. Perhaps a lot of that is cabin noise, and without it, the transmissions would bec…

For what it’s worth the radio transmissions sound quite a bit more clear (usually) in the plane. LiveATC uses ground stations which don’t always have great reception and they compress the audio like crazy. I can barely make out what they say on LiveATC sometimes but in the air it’s rarely a problem.

That's what I was hoping is the case. Good to know!

Re: FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics

#27

Post by emteycz »

whiddershins wrote: post #15

If FedEx and Amazon set up private airports dedicated to these machines, only put cargo in them, and make their flight routes distinct from other aircraft, I imagine this could be up and running faster than people think. Edge cases shouldn’t result in loss of life, so getting through regulations and insuring should be much easier than other situations.

Don't forget that aircraft falls on someone or someone's property.

Re: FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics

#28

Post by sargun »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #5

Frankly the tech for autonomous aviation has been around for a while now. I expect even strong crosswind landings will soon be better handled by a computer than a pilot. But then here’s the problem... Autonomous systems are great when things are going well, but at the end of the day they fare very poorly in edge cases sometimes with catastrophic results. When you’re driving a car you usually follow traffic rules and…

So, NASA, is in the process of working on some of this. They’re trying to come up with a new ATC model which will work better for drones / eVTOL air taxis / etc.

Some of the ideas are around “carving” out corridors, where you would be able to fly, and this corridor could be reasonably large (across multiple towers today). The other interesting thing is hierarchical ATC automation.

So, normal ATC would still exist, but they would interact with a tier of controllers who are responsible for them interacting with UAVs.

A lot of this apparently came from the idea that eVTOL is the future, and we will all be commuting to work in an electric airplane.

See: https://www.nasa.gov/simlabs/atc

Re: FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics

#29

Post by Enginerrrd »

GhostVII wrote: post #24
alfalfasprout wrote: post #5

Frankly the tech for autonomous aviation has been around for a while now. I expect even strong crosswind landings will soon be better handled by a computer than a pilot. But then here’s the problem... Autonomous systems are great when things are going well, but at the end of the day they fare very poorly in edge cases sometimes with catastrophic results. When you’re driving a car you usually follow traffic rules and…

I think the best case scenario is to have an autonomous system that only steps in when the human pilot is doing something wrong. Then the pilots stay well-trained, while getting the benefits of autopilot. You could then manually give autopilot control for short periods in times when it is too dangerous for human pilots, ex. windy dark landings.

This has sort of been tried before for some time with occasional disastrous results. When the pilot was trying to do one thing to save the aircraft and the autonomous system was trying to do another, crashes have resulted. It's likely that either one would have been ok on their own, but the combination can be bad.

I know the rebuttal to this is "override the pilot" but it's really not so simple. Sometimes the pilot has switched off part but not all of an autopilot system, and it makes sense to maintain that capability.

It's a very difficult problem to solve.

Re: FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics

#30

Post by karmakaze »

GhostVII wrote: post #24
alfalfasprout wrote: post #5

Frankly the tech for autonomous aviation has been around for a while now. I expect even strong crosswind landings will soon be better handled by a computer than a pilot. But then here’s the problem... Autonomous systems are great when things are going well, but at the end of the day they fare very poorly in edge cases sometimes with catastrophic results. When you’re driving a car you usually follow traffic rules and…

I think the best case scenario is to have an autonomous system that only steps in when the human pilot is doing something wrong. Then the pilots stay well-trained, while getting the benefits of autopilot. You could then manually give autopilot control for short periods in times when it is too dangerous for human pilots, ex. windy dark landings.

This reads like 737-Max MCAS. Who/what decides that 'the pilot is doing something wrong'?
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