Can Autonomous Aircraft be far behind?

[Trey Kule]

Apple is the latest to announce they will have a self driving car on the road very soon. 
And the initial stats from several million miles of driving, from several manufacturers, are that they  are safer.


Now with the latest aircraft  having avionics that can communicate position to other air craft, and aircraft operating in a generally much more formal manner, how far behind can pilotless aircraft be?


As self driving cars become more common, the resistance by the public to self flying aircraft is going to decrease.


I forecast that within a decade we will see cargo aircraft flying pilotless, and ver soon after long haul flight will be two crew, and shorter haul, single crew.


The simple fact is automation can do a better job then humans.

[Eric Janson]

There may be tasks that computers can do better than humans - but we are still a very long way from Pilotless Airliners imho.


I fly airbus - highly advanced with lots of computers. I've seen plenty of computers fail or have to be reset over the years. Failures have ranged from minor to serious threat to safety.


You cannot compare a car and an aircraft imho. Aircraft are several orders of magnitude more complex.

[Trey Kule]

Actually, after researching a bit,  autonomous cars more challanges.  From development costs to being on the road with upredictable human beings who might just run a red light ( for example), or rear end you.
Communications at intersections between cars is one of those challanges.



The question as to systems failures and redundancy is a technology issue.  We are never going to have 100% safety.  The question really is will fully or partially automated flight prove to be safer than flight crew interaction.


The stats from cars is that self driving cars will reduce the accident rate.and the stats from the present day military aircraft are improving.




And, it may be that , for example on long haul flights we start by reducing it to two crew, to provide for the high workload portions, and then just one in the cockpit to monitor.


My feeling, with all the military UAVs already flying, and the proposed next generation fighters being RPV or UAV, it is not that far away.


Once people get used to self driving cars, the concerns of a self flying aircraft will diminish.


Drones are not new. They have been around since the 60s!  And looking at very recent accident conclusions, the manufacturers are being attempted to be held responsable for accidents.  The technology will improve dramatically if that proves to be the case.


I guess the future will tell.

[ScudRunner-d95]

I think we are a long way out from pilot less planes, however I think we are closer to single pilot airliners than most would think.

Except for this scenario


http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/29/us/americ ... g-landing/


Thats a shit day at the office.

[Three Bars]

I don't think we'll ever have pilotless aircraft. But perhaps pilot monitored aircraft with all operations fully automated with either in flight or ground control override if the aircraft is operating outside of normal parameters. Rather than ATC issuing clearances and instructions, a computer issuing them to a computer receiving them will eliminate errors and increase efficiency.

However.... ....like today's pilot hand flying skills are degrading, how much more will that be a factor in future aircraft?  Today at least even in a highly automated aircraft  the pilot still does the most of the critical maneuvers manually like takeoff and landing as well as the decision making with each new scenario. The initial and recurrent training focusing on manual flying would have to be more intense and more often than it is currently to prevent those skills from degrading to the point of being unrecoverable.

The other option is to eliminate the human factor all together and accept the losses of a fully automated aircraft crashing which statistically would be far less than it is now, but would be unsettling and likely drive away many passengers.

[ScudRunner-d95]

[url=http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/ ... fly-plane/]http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/ ... fly-plane/[/url]


This is DARPAs answer, but can it get me a coffee ?