141–150 of 193 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazing how bad the speech synthesis is for something so safety critical.
The embedded systems qualified for use in general aviation avionics have very limited hardware resources. They are severely constrained by form factor, power, and cooling. It's amazing that the developers were able to get speech synthesis working so well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does: > Safe Return is an emergency system designed to be deployed by passengers in case of pilot incapacitation. But Safe Return also is programmed to activate itself when it senses the pilot has become unresponsive or succumbed to hypoxia. Source: https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2025/june/pilot...
Ah ok I was not aware of that. I have not flown a plane that had it (I did fly some with G1000 and autopilot but it didn't have this, I think it's only an option on the G3000). But I just saw about the activation button.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does the AF 449 crash have to do with the existence of a button to return the aircraft to wings level + zero vertical speed? To answer your question though, LVL has been around for close to two decades now. IIRC there was a Cirrus/Garmin partnership that added it to the latter's G1000/GFC 700 and it's since trickled out to other consumer-grade autopilots.
The AF 449 was in a stall, and the pilots panicked and did exactly the wrong thing. The pilot came out of the lavatory and immediately realized what was wrong, and pushed the stick forward. But it was too late. If the captain could figure it out, so could the computer. I recall another crash, not so long ago, of a commuter plane where the wings iced up a bit and the airplane stalled. The crew kept trying to pull the…
> "If the captain could figure it out, so could the computer."
The aircraft system entered ALT2 mode, where bank-angle protection is lost. Protection for angle-of-attack is also lost when 2 or more input references are lost.
You might describe these circumstances as the computer saying "I don't know what the heck's going on, you humans figure it out please".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don’t have self driving cars.
I've confirmed with my own 2 eyes cars driving on the road without humans in them. I've also rode in a Waymo which had no driver. They definitely exist. Teslas also have self driving.
I've never seen any clear info about that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I'm glad it's that slow. I can't shake the idea of the horrors it would be to get a glucose pump whose software has been vibe-coded.
I work on team managing safety critical code. Management has asked to increase our AI usage, especially for generating requirements.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am retiring next year. So that should solve my problem :). I don’t know how other medical device companies are working but in mine leadership is dominated by people who know medical devices from a sales or medical perspective. Software is kind of secondary to them although it’s becoming really important. A lot of our processes aren’t very good for software so we end up doing a lot of work that makes no sense and ma…
I've worked with a startup in the medical device space. Well funded. They were indistinguishable from most other startups, except in one detail: they did everything right. They made some extremely high tech stuff, very lightweight, and technology wise they were closer to watchmakers than to software and hardware people. I loved working with them and helped them to improve their yield (their QA was so strict that of t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is in this particular case that requires outdated tools? If they are code, certainly you can write them on VS Code or whatever you likes, and only need to compile and load on the original tools, can’t you?
Sometimes it's because you need to support ancient esoteric hardware that's not supported by any other tools, or because you've built so much of your own tooling around a particular tool that it resembles application platform in it's own right. Other times it's just because there are lots of other teams involved in validation, architecture, requirements and document management and for everyone except the developers,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does the AF 449 crash have to do with the existence of a button to return the aircraft to wings level + zero vertical speed? To answer your question though, LVL has been around for close to two decades now. IIRC there was a Cirrus/Garmin partnership that added it to the latter's G1000/GFC 700 and it's since trickled out to other consumer-grade autopilots.
The AF 449 was in a stall, and the pilots panicked and did exactly the wrong thing. The pilot came out of the lavatory and immediately realized what was wrong, and pushed the stick forward. But it was too late. If the captain could figure it out, so could the computer. I recall another crash, not so long ago, of a commuter plane where the wings iced up a bit and the airplane stalled. The crew kept trying to pull the…
What exactly was a computer at the time supposed to figure out with unreliable data, especially after a stall had first developed?
Also in fairness I was a bit too opaque with my point, which is that 1) LVL requires the pilot to actually press it, which they are unlikely to do if like you yourself have mentioned they are clueless about what situation they're actually in, and 2) LVL is not appropriate stall recovery so I don't really see how it is relevant to a case of an aerodynamic stall.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Famously the golfer Payne Stewart and the total of 6 people on the LearJet 35, died after a sudden loss of cabin pressure incapacitated everyone including the pilots. A system like this, would have detected it and possibly saved them. I wouldn't expect a whole lot more detail, as that airport is often used by defense contractors like Ball Aerospace, who have a large office nearby.
Even without autoland, I've never understood why there wasn't an emergency system to handle depressurization events when it detects no pilot input. There have been enough ghost flights, even in the last 20 years, that such a system could've saved hundreds of lives. (Helios Air 552) Automatically dropping altitude, or even just changing the transponder to some automatic value, would help.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The hardware side is routinely impressive. The software and business sides leave a lot to be desired.
Cane to say the same. I have a Garmin "smart" watch (with every app notification etc disabled) and I love the fact that I can do almost two weeks of exercises (ride, walk, gym) without needing to charge it. The bike computers are also solid. But sadly the UX of the software on these leaves a bunch to be desired, and I've been bitten by many software and firmware bugs in the last years... Including months for which HR…