Don't sell yourself short, Henning. People say you are nuts about lots of other stuff too.
Jim R
Collierville, TN
N7155H--1946 Piper J-3 Cub
N3368K--1946 Globe GC-1B Swift
N4WJ--1994 Van's RV-4
With all due respect to Commander Lassen and the many other men like him, you may be missing the point. Without pilots in aircraft, missions like the one that made him famous will be unnecessary. That's a big factor in the appeal of drones. Plus, switching manned missions to drones will necessarily require a decision to give up the capability to do certain things. Someone will decide that the trade-off is worth it. Nevertheless, there will always be manned aircraft for some missions.
There are some significant differences between the military and the airlines that you fall to consider. To start with, customers and unions.
Yes, there is a significant difference between military and civilian ops when it comes to autonomy, civilian is way easier.
Why do you think that? With the available instrumentation and processing capability, that should be no sweat. The most difficult thing to program into that entire scenario is how to make the decision to depart the scene. Laser and Radar precision referencing for machine placement in a multi fluid environment has existed for quite a while now. It's just a matter of adapting new hardware and adding an axis.
By and large the technology to pick a spot like in the video you linked, navigate to it, land on it, hold position, and depart exits - some of it is 'embryonic' but it's coming. LIDAR/LADAR and what an operator (NOI) thinks of as Radar barely scratch the surface of what's being considered and researched. In and of itself it's not *that* difficult a problem, although the sensor and nav issues are currently a stretch. What *is* a problem is all of the contingency management. Autonomy has no 'judgement' and the failure modes and corrective action *must* be considered, implemented, and tested in advance. The defense contractor that figures out how to validate&verify non-deterministic guidance, nav, and control systems will rule the GNC and autonomy world - for a while
By and large the technology to pick a spot like in the video you linked, navigate to it, land on it, hold position, and depart exits - some of it is 'embryonic' but it's coming. LIDAR/LADAR and what an operator (NOI) thinks of as Radar barely scratch the surface of what's being considered and researched. In and of itself it's not *that* difficult a problem, although the sensor and nav issues are currently a stretch. What *is* a problem is all of the contingency management. Autonomy has no 'judgement' and the failure modes and corrective action *must* be considered, implemented, and tested in advance. The defense contractor that figures out how to validate&verify non-deterministic guidance, nav, and control systems will rule the GNC and autonomy world - for a while
And it will be "a while" before it sees regular use carrying soft pink bodies with no pilot - for these reasons.
Nauga,
the control freak
ya, ya....radar would never warn of an obstacle....and software is not capable of integrating those threats.
I guess it'll just crash.....just like when the aircraft moves into one of those LZ objects.
I just posted that ironing out the contingencies is the hard part, but blade awareness seems kind of obvious, why would you assume it *wouldn't* have it? And the fused sensor version doesn't blink or look away. There are a few videos near the one you linked to that show less-than-stellar blade awareness 'wetware' as well (oh ye of little faith)
I just posted that ironing out the contingencies is the hard part, but blade awareness seems kind of obvious, why would you assume it *wouldn't* have it? And the fused sensor version doesn't blink or look away. There are a few videos near the one you linked to that show less-than-stellar blade awareness 'wetware' as well (oh ye of little faith)
It's the more subtle or unpredictable faults that bother me. And the ones no one considers until they happen - once.
Nauga,
predicting unpredictability
Anything that's going to operate in an environment where these are issue will have to be capable of dealing with them. Either the helo/airplane adapts or the mission does. I think that everyone researching these systems, at least *seriously* researching them, understands that.
There will never be faultless autonomy, just like there will never be faultless pilots. And eyeballs are relatively easy to replace, it's the adaptability and reconfigurability of the brain that's difficult. *Some* brains, anyway.
But that doesn't mean people aren't working on it. It just might not be as close to live-cargo-rated as, say, Pop Mech would have you believe.
Oh my....you wouldn't think they'll have a video link for a human to over-ride the auto functions?....back at the Ops center.
What prevents a pilot from doing this? If the mission is to take on cargo autonomously with the possibility of someone or something moving into the disc then there need to be a mitigation plan and plans for contingencies on top of those. No one seriously considering these things disputes that and no one considering them thinks they're solved. Yet.
FTFY
Incremental steps. Sometime lots of small ones, and not all of them forward.
Autonomous systems don't not have failure modes. They just have different failure modes than human-operated systems.
