When will the public accept full automation

[brien23]

With pilots being the most probably cause of aircraft crashes, how long will it be before the public will accept full automation no pilots in the front of the bus.

 

[roncachamp]

With pilots being the most probably cause of aircraft crashes, how long will it be before the public will accept full automation no pilots in the front of the bus.

Full automation? No control at all from any source outside of the airplane?

 

[RotorAndWing]

 

[Checkout_my_Six]

Full automation? No control at all from any source outside of the airplane?

even today's UAS are not fully automated.....there are data links, primary and secondary, for control and operation.

Some systems are more automated than others....allowing updates to waypoints and autoland TALS (Army assets), while other systems are just man in the loop remote control (AirForce assets).

So....it depends.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

Probably not long after they get used to fully automated automobiles.

 

[mkosmo]

The systems guy in me doesn't like the idea of any external manipulation of the input loop... Any external influence increases the attack surface.

 

[Unit74]

It's all fun and games till some 14 year old in China hacks the flight and plays "How Much Is This Flight Worth?"

 

[Checkout_my_Six]

It's all fun and games till some 14 year old in China hacks the flight and plays "How Much Is This Flight Worth?"

....and then someone loses an eye.

 

[MAKG1]

The systems guy in me doesn't like the idea of any external manipulation of the input loop... Any external influence increases the attack surface.

No external manipulation?

Like, say, wind and ground?

I guess fully automated aircraft are just fine parked at the gate….

 

[Checkout_my_Six]

No external manipulation?

Like, say, wind and ground?

I guess fully automated aircraft are just fine parked at the gate….

no need for that....a flight computer is more than capable of maintaining a ground track to various way points....and even hold a glide slope for an approach.

 

[mkosmo]

No external manipulation?

Like, say, wind and ground?

I guess fully automated aircraft are just fine parked at the gate….

You know what I mean.

 

[cowman]

I don't necessarily have a problem with it if there's a human who can take over. It could be a one pilot crew and he could just nap or read a book on the flight over but I think you'd need that before anyone would be ok with it.

 

[OkieFlyer]

No pilot at all?

I don't know, but I hope it's not in my lifetime.

 

[Gucci Pilot]

I think first we would go a long time with at least a pilot monitoring from inside the aircraft.

 

[mkosmo]

I think first we would go a long time with at least a pilot monitoring from inside the aircraft.

To be entirely fair... Except for critical phases that are uncoupled, don't we effectively see this in a lot of ops in cruise already?

 

[denverpilot]

Self driving cars are going to be awesome. You can leave instructions in your Will that the car will be programmed to go all the places you never got a chance to go when alive, and that until your money runs out, it'll pay for someone to arrange to have your car programmed to go to all those places and be refueled along the way, so the dead you can ride around, see the sights, and decompose the car.

Hahahaha.

Okay not as unlikely: we will see news reports of a self diving car or fully automated aircraft showing up somewhere with a dead guy in it.

They'll probably then require that the aircraft or car check our pulse through our asses or something and re-route to the closest emergency services location if we have croaked so cars and airplanes don't show up at loved one's houses with dead relatives in them or airports in equipped to handle a dead guy.

Heh. Twisted ain't it?

 

[Kritchlow]

Never. Passengers, whether they know it or not, take comfort knowing the pilots have "skin in the game".
As a professional pilot I don't ensure the safety of my passengers, I ensure the safety of myself. The passengers follow. If I walk away, so do they.

 

[Dav8or]

Never. Passengers, whether they know it or not, take comfort knowing the pilots have "skin in the game".
As a professional pilot I don't ensure the safety of my passengers, I ensure the safety of myself. The passengers follow. If I walk away, so do they.

I think with recent events, and it's not the first time a nut job pilot has tried to take everyone out, that the comfort in pilots and their skin in the game is rapidly eroding.

It's pretty clear to me that what we need is a symbiotic relationship. Pilots need to monitor the computer and the computer needs to monitor the pilots. We need to give the computer more authority to over ride bad pilot behavior.

As far as I can figure, there are only three ways a pilot can intentionally, or unintentionally destroy the airplane with everyone in it.

1. Fly the airplane into something other than air. A mountain, a building, the ground or water.
2. Manipulate the controls in such a way as to break the airplane, or put it into an unrecoverable attitude.
3. Purposely de-fuel, or deplete the fuel in the plane and position it over hostile terrain.

IMO, all of these things could be identified by a computer that has complete access to all information on the flight deck. With full authority and fly by wire controls, a computer could easily rest control from an idiot pilot or terrorist. In other words, the HAL 9000 says- "I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that", locks the errant pilot out and sets up an emergency automatic, autonomous navigation with approach to the nearest suitable airport.

The computer could then automatically squawk "7800" to let ATC know exactly what's going on and based on current position, they would then know exactly where the plane was headed. The airplane would then land and come to a complete stop on the runway by itself. This system could save the day in the case of nut job pilots, pilot incapacitation and terrorist take over.

I believe that nearly all of the technological pieces to complete this system exists today. They just need assembly. It seems like it would just be a hack of the systems we already have in new airliners rolling off the line now. There would be expense in the design and certification of this software mod, but I don't think it would be huge.

Does this make sense? Is it the future and the best way to go? As we know, the vast majority of airline deaths due to crashes are due to pilots and not the computers. At the same time, I for one am not ready to trust my life and sit in the back of a tube going 550mph at 34,000 ft with nothing but a computer at the controls.

 

[Kritchlow]

I think with recent events, and it's not the first time a nut job pilot has tried to take everyone out, that the comfort in pilots and their skin in the game is rapidly eroding.

It's pretty clear to me that what we need is a symbiotic relationship. Pilots need to monitor the computer and the computer needs to monitor the pilots. We need to give the computer more authority to over ride bad pilot behavior.

As far as I can figure, there are only three ways a pilot can intentionally, or unintentionally destroy the airplane with everyone in it.

1. Fly the airplane into something other than air. A mountain, a building, the ground or water.
2. Manipulate the controls in such a way as to break the airplane, or put it into an unrecoverable attitude.
3. Purposely de-fuel, or deplete the fuel in the plane and position it over hostile terrain.

IMO, all of these things could be identified by a computer that has complete access to all information on the flight deck. With full authority and fly by wire controls, a computer could easily rest control from an idiot pilot or terrorist. In other words, the HAL 9000 says- "I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that", locks the errant pilot out and sets up an emergency automatic, autonomous navigation with approach to the nearest suitable airport.

The computer could then automatically squawk "7800" to let ATC know exactly what's going on and based on current position, they would then know exactly where the plane was headed. The airplane would then land and come to a complete stop on the runway by itself. This system could save the day in the case of nut job pilots, pilot incapacitation and terrorist take over.

I believe that nearly all of the technological pieces to complete this system exists today. They just need assembly. It seems like it would just be a hack of the systems we already have in new airliners rolling off the line now. There would be expense in the design and certification of this software mod, but I don't think it would be huge.

Does this make sense? Is it the future and the best way to go? As we know, the vast majority of airline deaths due to crashes are due to pilots and not the computers. At the same time, I for one am not ready to trust my life and sit in the back of a tube going 550mph at 34,000 ft with nothing but a computer at the controls.

Yup. However unlikely, anything is possible. Like I said, ANYTHING is possible, so any ground based system can also do the same. It could command incorrect fueling, altitudes, control movements... Bottom line there is no such thing as 100% perfection.

 

[MAKG1]

Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

I can come up with several failure modes for that that look a helluva lot like AF447.

Locking out a pilot based on automatic behaviors is not just stupid, it's send-the-responsible-person-to-prison stupid.

 

[Bob Noel]

I think with recent events, and it's not the first time a nut job pilot has tried to take everyone out, that the comfort in pilots and their skin in the game is rapidly eroding.

It's pretty clear to me that what we need is a symbiotic relationship. Pilots need to monitor the computer and the computer needs to monitor the pilots. We need to give the computer more authority to over ride bad pilot behavior.

As far as I can figure, there are only three ways a pilot can intentionally, or unintentionally destroy the airplane with everyone in it.

1. Fly the airplane into something other than air. A mountain, a building, the ground or water.
2. Manipulate the controls in such a way as to break the airplane, or put it into an unrecoverable attitude.
3. Purposely de-fuel, or deplete the fuel in the plane and position it over hostile terrain.

IMO, all of these things could be identified by a computer that has complete access to all information on the flight deck. With full authority and fly by wire controls, a computer could easily rest control from an idiot pilot or terrorist. In other words, the HAL 9000 says- "I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that", locks the errant pilot out and sets up an emergency automatic, autonomous navigation with approach to the nearest suitable airport.

The computer could then automatically squawk "7800" to let ATC know exactly what's going on and based on current position, they would then know exactly where the plane was headed. The airplane would then land and come to a complete stop on the runway by itself. This system could save the day in the case of nut job pilots, pilot incapacitation and terrorist take over.

I believe that nearly all of the technological pieces to complete this system exists today. They just need assembly. It seems like it would just be a hack of the systems we already have in new airliners rolling off the line now. There would be expense in the design and certification of this software mod, but I don't think it would be huge.

Does this make sense? Is it the future and the best way to go? As we know, the vast majority of airline deaths due to crashes are due to pilots and not the computers. At the same time, I for one am not ready to trust my life and sit in the back of a tube going 550mph at 34,000 ft with nothing but a computer at the controls.

People have an interesting albeit naive trust in computers and hardware.

At the current state-of-the-art wrt software/hardware and safety critical systems, we'd have more risk from automation than a crazy-*** idiot pilot.

 

[taters]

as soon as the first one crashes.then the media will hystericly start crying for more pilots .....interestingly I read the (Rotor /Wing) article that Airbus tried to implement "auto-avoid" technology over a decade ago but it was scrapped.

The US is THE model of safe to the world but it seems that other countries have a problem replicated the sucess of the US. This is why at some point more automation will find its way the flight deck but I never see a plane for passenger transport without a pilot. As others have stated , the trust in technology today is almost reckless....if they knew how oftten the planes do things they werent told to do..they might wake up. Human Systems will always be a part of the flight deck in some way. There is no damn way the FAA will approve AI planes in the next 2 lifetimes...it took them a year to approve my airline just to use a damn IPAD.

it would also be a miracle for one to get anywhere on time...just imagine a computer taking every single EICAS message etc seriously/ with no system knowlege to discern a nuicance message or something similar from a hard write-up.

 

[roncachamp]

as soon as the first one crashes.then the media will hystericly start crying for more pilots .....interestingly I read an article that Airbus tried to implement "anti-collision" technology over a decade ago but it was scrapped.

The US is THE model of safe to the world but it seems that other countries have a problem replicated the sucess of the US. This is why at some point more automation will find its way the flight deck but I never see a plane for passenger transport without a pilot. As others have stated , the trust in technology today is almost reckless....if they knew how oftten the planes do things they werent told to do..they might wake up. Human Systems will always be a part of the flight deck in some way, there is no damn way the FAA will let it happen...it took them a year to approve my airline just to use a damn IPAD.

People point to pilots screwing up and suggest full automation might be the solution. They're ignoring the times a pilot saved the day. A few years ago a flock of birds took out both engines on an Airbus. The pilots, live human beings on board with skin in the game, put the airplane down in the river, the only open area around. How would full automation have handled that?

 

[Checkout_my_Six]

No worries.....this will be a slow transition.

As technology inserts itself into the cockpit there will be a progression. A progression of more automation.....and eventually adding more data link capabilities that allow information to flow to the ground and back. This information will be in the form of data packets that will perform various functions. Eventually those functions will update the flight data computer.....change way points.....etc....then, control the complete flight profile.....from take-off to landing.

It will happen....but, it will seem like a slow progression. It will lead to the loss of a cockpit crew member....kinda like no one thought possible to operate without a navigator.....then the flight engineer left.....next up is the FO.

For now.....we have bandwidth issues. Once that's solved.....it's gonna begin.

as soon as the first one crashes.then the media will hystericly start crying for more pilots .....interestingly I read an article that Airbus tried to implement "anti-collision" technology over a decade ago but it was scrapped.

The US is THE model of safe to the world but it seems that other countries have a problem replicated the sucess of the US. This is why at some point more automation will find its way the flight deck but I never see a plane for passenger transport without a pilot. As others have stated , the trust in technology today is almost reckless....if they knew how oftten the planes do things they werent told to do..they might wake up. Human Systems will always be a part of the flight deck in some way, there is no damn way the FAA will let it happen...it took them a year to approve my airline just to use a damn IPAD.

 

[taters]

No worries.....this will be a slow transition.

As technology inserts itself into the cockpit there will be a progression. A progression of more automation.....and eventually adding more data link capabilities that allow information to flow to the ground and back. This information will be in the form of data packets that will perform various functions. Eventually those functions will update the flight data computer.....change way points.....etc....then, control the complete flight profile.....from take-off to landing.

It will happen....but, it will seam like a slow progression. It will lead to the loss of a cockpit crew member....kinda like no one thought possible to operate without a navigator.....then the flight engineer left.....next up is the FO.

I flew with a retired Rock/Collins engineer that basicaly said around 2050 ATC will upload a command to the plane and the cockpit crew (what ever that will be) will accept the command. The pilot(s) will have the ability to still completley control the airplane if needed. Its been an on going project with NASA for a good while now.

 

[Checkout_my_Six]

I flew with a retired Rock/Collins engineer that basicaly said around 2050 ATC will upload a command to the plane and the cockpit crew (what ever that will be) will accept the command. The pilot(s) will have the ability to still completley control the airplane if needed. Its been an on going project with NASA for a good while now.

We have 40,000 lb UAS today....that operate as I described. We have the technology...and it works reliably. It's just a mater of time till it's accepted.

 

[Dav8or]

Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

I can come up with several failure modes for that that look a helluva lot like AF447.

Locking out a pilot based on automatic behaviors is not just stupid, it's send-the-responsible-person-to-prison stupid.

Care to enumerate these failure modes? If you can so easily identify them, could you not just as easily come up with solutions? Why is flying an airplane from point to point too complicated for a computer to accomplish?

In the case of AF477, the pilots were in control and crashed. How could the computer do any worse? In that case, people say that nobody was flying the airplane. Could this not be a case where the computer steps in and flies the airplane when no one else is?

I was suggesting a symbiotic relationship. If the computer is screwing up due to software glitch, or bad data from a sensor, such as a pitot tube, the pilots would have the authority to identify, over ride and correct this problem. In addition, my proposal was to leave cockpit management and authority just as it is now with humans in control.

The HAL 9000 only takes over when it can identify stupid pilot behavior, like directing the airplane to fly into the ground, or using the controls to enter a spin, or flying over the ocean and pushing the button to dump fuel. It could also assist when the pilots are busy on their lap tops and fly 100 miles past their airport, or the pilots are making a terrible approach to an airport.

I'm sure I could be completely wrong and such a system will never be built due to the complexities and potential dangers, but I doubt it. If I thought of it, that means there are people already working on it.

 

[rpadula]

With pilots being the most probably cause of aircraft crashes, how long will it be before the public will accept full automation no pilots in the front of the bus.

According to Douglas Adams, it will be when the flying public is under age 35 at the time of its invention:

1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

​

Oh, and cue the joke about the dog in the co-pilot's seat...

 

[rpadula]

Self driving cars are going to be awesome. You can leave instructions in your Will that the car will be programmed to go all the places you never got a chance to go when alive, and that until your money runs out, it'll pay for someone to arrange to have your car programmed to go to all those places and be refueled along the way, so the dead you can ride around, see the sights, and decompose the car.

Hahahaha.

Okay not as unlikely: we will see news reports of a self diving car or fully automated aircraft showing up somewhere with a dead guy in it.

They'll probably then require that the aircraft or car check our pulse through our asses or something and re-route to the closest emergency services location if we have croaked so cars and airplanes don't show up at loved one's houses with dead relatives in them or airports in equipped to handle a dead guy.

Heh. Twisted ain't it?

LOL Nate. You are one sick puppy.

Apple Watch will solve the heartbeat measuring problem though. No need for the anal probe.

 

[denverpilot]

People point to pilots screwing up and suggest full automation might be the solution. They're ignoring the times a pilot saved the day. A few years ago a flock of birds took out both engines on an Airbus. The pilots, live human beings on board with skin in the game, put the airplane down in the river, the only open area around. How would full automation have handled that?

They're also ignoring how many times their computer blew up from bad code. LOL. A common mistake in computing and automation.

 

[denverpilot]

For now.....we have bandwidth issues. Once that's solved.....it's gonna begin.

Not only that but you have an encryption and repudiation issue. You're going to need a really secure data channel to pull off the ground command thing.

Or we can be stupid and start with unencrypted, spoofable links. And learn that lesson the hard way.

 

[mkosmo]

I flew with a retired Rock/Collins engineer that basicaly said around 2050 ATC will upload a command to the plane and the cockpit crew (what ever that will be) will accept the command. The pilot(s) will have the ability to still completley control the airplane if needed. Its been an on going project with NASA for a good while now.

The NASA SPO project? We've been working on it in our office, too. You should read some on it. Not quite ground command for what we're working with, but more of the super dispatcher position.

 

[Clark1961]

Not only that but you have an encryption and repudiation issue. You're going to need a really secure data channel to pull off the ground command thing.

Or we can be stupid and start with unencrypted, spoofable links. And learn that lesson the hard way.

You need to go talk to the folks at Freewave - they're already doing this stuff.

 

[Gucci Pilot]

To be entirely fair... Except for critical phases that are uncoupled, don't we effectively see this in a lot of ops in cruise already?

Yes, I was including critical phases and ground ops.

 

[mkosmo]

Yes, I was including critical phases and ground ops.

That gives me the willies. Until ground surveillance is significantly improved, that's a recipe for disaster. The rest doesn't scare me too much as auto land has a fantastic track record. I imagine auto takeoff would be a natural extension of that.

 

[denverpilot]

You need to go talk to the folks at Freewave - they're already doing this stuff.

Lots of folks doing that encryption stuff. Not many in aviation though. And not any doing repudiation with a separately loaded key in each mobile device outside of MilAv that I'm aware of.

Most systems are using a shared key for encryption of the RF path, and a individual unit ID riding the shared encryption path. No endpoint to endpoint key exchange and separate crypto between end points. (Other than perhaps in in flight credit card transactions.)

Would have to see how Freewave implemented it terrestrially. Can't tell from their website fluff. Heh.

They say AES but I bet that's a single AES key for the entire fleet, no individual keys.

The above is fine for most terrestrial applications. Especially if the admin has remote kill/remote wipe capability to get a link radio that someone has found their way onto the shared key network with, blown off the network.

Terrestrially that works because you can drive to the thing and re-load it after you figure out how the physical security at the location was breached. Flight? Not a good setup.

You want a key pair per device with live bodies on the line, aloft. I'd consider that a bare minimum.

And the key authority server that creates the individual keys and the process for distributing them, had better be secured like Fort Knox.

Freewave looks like it spun out of a bunch of the work done to show that power grid and pipeline SCADA was an open security hole waiting to be tampered with. NIST did a lot of work on that over the last decade and helped set up testing and auditing processes. Cool stuff.

Probably not exactly right for command and control of aircraft. But a lot closer than what most aviation data networks are using over the air in the civvie market.

 

[Clark1961]

Lots of folks doing that encryption stuff. Not many in aviation though. And not any doing repudiation with a separately loaded key in each mobile device outside of MilAv that I'm aware of.

Freewave is providing radio links for military aviation, specifically for drones. It's a large chunk of their business.

 

[nauga]

They're also ignoring how many times their computer blew up from bad code. LOL. A common mistake in computing and automation.

Another common mistake is judging the reliability of flight critical software while ignorant of the design, testing, and validation standards of same.

Nauga,
who has skin in the game

 

[mkosmo]

Lots of folks doing that encryption stuff. Not many in aviation though. And not any doing repudiation with a separately loaded key in each mobile device outside of MilAv that I'm aware of.

There are plenty of new ground link products with individual keys per aircraft outside of Military.

 

[Pilawt]

I'm not even crazy about the automated tram that shuttles between the terminals at O'Hare. I'm sure not getting on any "automated" airplane.