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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

#131

Post by jzwinck »

juliansimioni wrote: post #119
whiddershins wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s say you have one virtual pilot for 10 planes. They won’t all be landing at the same time. So that pilot could guide each one down successively during inclement weather. I bet that would be way more fun than the bunches of sitting around that I imagine is currently part of the job.

[pilot here] There's a lot more to managing planes in bad weather than landing them: you can't exactly fly through a thunderstorm. Furthermore, sometimes go/no-go decisions have to be made a long way out. If it looks like there might be lots of thunderstorms near your destination, it's sometimes prudent to divert immediately rather than risk being near an airport with weather too bad to land AND low fuel. A great exa…

> you can't exactly fly through a thunderstorm.

You can't, but can a UAV? I'm curious how much more tolerant of bad weather a plane can be if there are no people inside. Are storms often strong enough to knock a plane out of the sky?

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

#132

Post by scoopertrooper »

azinman2 wrote: post #125
bobbriody wrote: post #51

We're hiring! https://reliable.co/careers/ We built avionics, software, mechanisms and a comm system that enables automated operation of the plane from a remote command station. The remote operator has a GUI where they can command the aircraft. This article goes into a bit more detail about how it works: https://www.flightglobal.com/airframers/with-tesla-and-space...

What I haven't seen is any mention of what happens to all the pilots out there. Between COVID and now this, it seems like the path of a great middle/upper middle class job that's lasted for decades is doomed. For UPS/Fedex, I would also guess that the salary of the pilot is effectively a rounding error on all of the total costs of transporting objects around the world. What are your thoughts on this?

I think it's unfair to ask a technology startup to answer a public policy question. Economic forces will drive automation of these sorts of tasks one way or another, which will shift income away from labour and towards capital.

It's up to governments to ensure the winners compensate the losers. In the long term, this may be an UBI, but for now it should take the form of retraining and economic adjustment packages (similar to what might occur when tariffs are repealed). This should be funded by a super-profits tax on heavily automated industries.

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

#133

Post by ghayes »

jzwinck wrote: post #131
juliansimioni wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[pilot here] There's a lot more to managing planes in bad weather than landing them: you can't exactly fly through a thunderstorm. Furthermore, sometimes go/no-go decisions have to be made a long way out. If it looks like there might be lots of thunderstorms near your destination, it's sometimes prudent to divert immediately rather than risk being near an airport with weather too bad to land AND low fuel. A great exa…

> you can't exactly fly through a thunderstorm. You can't, but can a UAV? I'm curious how much more tolerant of bad weather a plane can be if there are no people inside. Are storms often strong enough to knock a plane out of the sky?

Flying by instruments, I wonder how high the risk truly is. One of the bigger concerns might be an instrument failure, like the failure of the airspeed sensors on Air France 447.

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

#135

Post by nradov »

outworlder wrote: post #123
rtkwe wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one benefit of having people in the loop in that they come with a completely independent set of sensors for flying the aircraft. Look at the recent issues where the single sensor on the Boeing Maxs crash the aircraft. They're far from perfect for sure though(see the times people did the opposite and ignored the correct sensors causing a crash) but there's a definite benefit to having two completely different…

> the single sensor And this is the problem. We wouldn't have autonomous aircraft without sensor redundancies. Even pilots have multiple redundant instruments.

Having multiple instances of the same type of sensor doesn't necessary help a lot because they tend to have highly correlated failure modes. A human pilot contains entirely different sensor hardware which, although unreliable, tends to fail in different ways.

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

#136

Post by scoopertrooper »

jzwinck wrote: post #131
juliansimioni wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[pilot here] There's a lot more to managing planes in bad weather than landing them: you can't exactly fly through a thunderstorm. Furthermore, sometimes go/no-go decisions have to be made a long way out. If it looks like there might be lots of thunderstorms near your destination, it's sometimes prudent to divert immediately rather than risk being near an airport with weather too bad to land AND low fuel. A great exa…

> you can't exactly fly through a thunderstorm. You can't, but can a UAV? I'm curious how much more tolerant of bad weather a plane can be if there are no people inside. Are storms often strong enough to knock a plane out of the sky?

The addition of people to the plane makes zero difference to storm survivability, why would it?

Storms are definitely regularly large enough to bring down even large aircraft, it doesn't happen often because planes of systems on board to ensure they avoid such weather, but it can happen!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Airways_Flight_242

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

#137

Post by MattGaiser »

azinman2 wrote: post #125
bobbriody wrote: post #51

We're hiring! https://reliable.co/careers/ We built avionics, software, mechanisms and a comm system that enables automated operation of the plane from a remote command station. The remote operator has a GUI where they can command the aircraft. This article goes into a bit more detail about how it works: https://www.flightglobal.com/airframers/with-tesla-and-space...

What I haven't seen is any mention of what happens to all the pilots out there. Between COVID and now this, it seems like the path of a great middle/upper middle class job that's lasted for decades is doomed. For UPS/Fedex, I would also guess that the salary of the pilot is effectively a rounding error on all of the total costs of transporting objects around the world. What are your thoughts on this?

The plane still has a human overseer if I understand correctly. It seems that the pilot just gets to work from home like the rest of is.

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

#138

Post by rlpb »

jzwinck wrote: post #131
juliansimioni wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[pilot here] There's a lot more to managing planes in bad weather than landing them: you can't exactly fly through a thunderstorm. Furthermore, sometimes go/no-go decisions have to be made a long way out. If it looks like there might be lots of thunderstorms near your destination, it's sometimes prudent to divert immediately rather than risk being near an airport with weather too bad to land AND low fuel. A great exa…

> you can't exactly fly through a thunderstorm. You can't, but can a UAV? I'm curious how much more tolerant of bad weather a plane can be if there are no people inside. Are storms often strong enough to knock a plane out of the sky?

> Are storms often strong enough to knock a plane out of the sky?

Simply put: yes. Not just any thunderstorm. All thunderstorms.

All aircraft avoid thunderstorms. It's not a case of discomfort for humans inside it; it's about the risk to aircraft themselves.

Thunderstorms contain severe updrafts and downdrafts and huge windshear between them. Aircraft cannot outclimb the downdrafts so cannot maintain altitude inside them. And severe windshear will tear them apart.

The only reason you don't hear about aircraft lost in thunderstorms is because pilots avoid them. All of them.

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

#139

Post by bfuclusion »

bobbriody wrote: post #51

We're hiring! https://reliable.co/careers/ We built avionics, software, mechanisms and a comm system that enables automated operation of the plane from a remote command station. The remote operator has a GUI where they can command the aircraft. This article goes into a bit more detail about how it works: https://www.flightglobal.com/airframers/with-tesla-and-space...

Question: Where do you see the FARs going with drones like this?

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

#140

Post by bfuclusion »

ghayes wrote: post #133
jzwinck wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't exactly fly through a thunderstorm. You can't, but can a UAV? I'm curious how much more tolerant of bad weather a plane can be if there are no people inside. Are storms often strong enough to knock a plane out of the sky?

Flying by instruments, I wonder how high the risk truly is. One of the bigger concerns might be an instrument failure, like the failure of the airspeed sensors on Air France 447.

Very very high. What fuels a thunderstorm is large amounts of air rising, and falling very rapidly. When the aircraft encounters those air movements it can very quickly exceed the structural limits of the aircraft.
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