Will robots/AI replace human pilots?

Checkout_my_Six said:
no...not if....but when. :D
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Beats me. All I'm saying is that the fact that navigators and flight engineers were eliminated does not tell us whether or not it will be feasible and advantageous to remove the one or more of the pilots.
 
Art VanDelay said:
Don't really have to "love" them, plenty of times I'd rather have a sister in a whorehouse than a brother in the union but they seem to be a necessary evil thus far.
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Unions exist because the same reason laws exist.

Because not everyone believes in doing the right thing.

Also, is your sister hot?
 
ircphoenix said:
Unions exist because the same reason laws exist.

Because not everyone believes in doing the right thing.

Also, is your sister hot?
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Actually truth be told I don't have any sisters ! As for unions I can only speak for ALPA as it's the only one I'm familiar with. That being said all they really do is enforce an employment agreement much in the same way an attorney would.
 
When I was working part time as a musician, nothing made me appreciate the union more than some of the non-union gigs!
 
Art VanDelay said:
Actually truth be told I don't have any sisters ! As for unions I can only speak for ALPA as it's the only one I'm familiar with. That being said all they really do is enforce an employment agreement much in the same way an attorney would.
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Wait... You don't have any sisters but you posted as though you do?! You got my hopes up and everything! :(
 
Art VanDelay said:
Yeah, funny I was just in Redondo Beach night before last - windy as hell. Does it ever get nice there ?
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Hell if I know. I'm one of the few people that lives in the city but refuses to go outside. Damn hippies here enjoying the outdoors and the beach.
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
The question is: "Will humans be allowed to control vehicles for recreation in an automated driving and/or airspace environment?"
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I think you nailed it. I suspect that future airspace will be designed around airliners and UAS, with GA becoming more like part 103 and human-driven cars relegated to closed tracks. I also vaguely wonder if cars will eventually have a VFR/IFR/night capability distinction.
 
I wonder how self-driving cars would handle finding a legal parking space. Will they be able to read parking signs? And will they be able to recognize all possible road hazards?
 
Palmpilot said:
I wonder how self-driving cars would handle finding a legal parking space. Will they be able to read parking signs? And will they be able to recognize all possible road hazards?
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Status of a piece of dirt is easy enough to maintain in a geographical information system.
There is currently an effort to network together sensors from different cars on the road to automatically share information like open parking spaces. Cars have all these cameras and radars for lane holding and auto-brake, deriving whether a parking spot is occupied or not is fairly straightforward. A common software platform for this was introduced at the Paris auto show last week.
 
Palmpilot said:
I wonder how self-driving cars would handle finding a legal parking space. Will they be able to read parking signs? And will they be able to recognize all possible road hazards?
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Decent sensor integration and a little forethought could handle both of these better than a large chunk of drivers do now. :rolleyes:

Nauga,
from between the lines
 
The car would also have to read and correctly interpret signs and markings indicating where and when it is legal to park. Otherwise, the option for the occupant of the car to take control would have to be retained.
 
Palmpilot said:
The car would also have to read and correctly interpret signs and markings indicating where and when it is legal to park. Otherwise, the option for the occupant of the car to take control would have to be retained.
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No, it doesn't. If the status of each parking spot is in the database, the car doesn't have to read anything (with the exception of maybe the cardboard 'no parking on x/x/16' for road repairs' signs).
 
weilke said:
No, it doesn't. If the status of each parking spot is in the database, the car doesn't have to read anything (with the exception of maybe the cardboard 'no parking on x/x/16' for road repairs' signs).
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I think you're underestimating what it would take to create a complete database and keep it up-to-date for the entire county, let alone the whole world.
 
Palmpilot said:
I think you're underestimating what it would take to create a complete database and keep it up-to-date for the entire county, let alone the whole world.
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I dont anticipate that my car will drive any further than a paved or gravel road can carry me. That's pretty much from the Darien gap in Panama to some ways past Fairbanks. Anyway, for some reason my car GPS and Waze always know what the speed limit is and which lane I happen to drive on. Between crowd-sourcing and dedicated mapping companies keeping a database of allowable parking spots won't be that hard. The muncipalities will get in on the action by receiving a payment for every parked smart-car and even upload data from their parking meters to indicate which spots are in the process of being vacated.
 
weilke said:
I dont anticipate that my car will drive any further than a paved or gravel road can carry me. That's pretty much from the Darien gap in Panama to some ways past Fairbanks. Anyway, for some reason my car GPS and Waze always know what the speed limit is and which lane I happen to drive on. Between crowd-sourcing and dedicated mapping companies keeping a database of allowable parking spots won't be that hard. The muncipalities will get in on the action by receiving a payment for every parked smart-car and even upload data from their parking meters to indicate which spots are in the process of being vacated.
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A few days ago, I was driving on a mountainous, but paved, Forest Service road in California, which had many stretches where it wasn't wide enough for two vehicles to safely pass each other going in the opposite direction, let alone being wide enough to safely park. Even in the parts that were wider than a single lane, while I guess it would have been technically legal to park there, there were long stretches where it would not have been a good idea. In spite of its being designated as a "national scenic byway," this road is not even in Google's database of SteetView images. And there were many roads I used that day that were more well-traveled, but would still require an AWFULLY large database to tell a self-driving car whether it was both safe and legal to park there.

I don't know how many miles of roads there are in North America that currently require human judgment to decide whether it's safe and legal to park, but it has to be in the millions. Creating a database to cover all that would be a HUGE job, and I don't see how it would be practical to automate that on sparsely-traveled roads.

Those are a couple of the reasons why I'm not sure that completely eliminating human drivers will ever be practical or cost-effective. The problem is MUCH bigger than figuring out how to accommodate it in urban areas.
 
weilke said:
10 years from now cargo jets will be single pilot with a autoland capable autopilot that can be remotely operated from the manufacturers emergency backup center. The system will have redundant datalinks through both satcom and terrestial stations at the major airports. 20 years from now new regional jets will be single pilot using the same by then proven, technology. At that point, parcel freight will go unmanned.
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We all thought the same thing about supersonic flight ;)
 
Someone once told me unions are earned.... like how a restraining order is earned.
 
I apologize if this point has already been made, but one big difference between autonomous cars and autonomous airplanes is that in cars, "other drivers" are one of your biggest risks. Remove the idiot drivers and you will be safer.
With airplanes, the problem is either with the pilot in control or a mechanical problem. So you gain little from autonomous airplanes.
 
JOhnH said:
With airplanes, the problem is either with the pilot in control or a mechanical problem. So you gain little from autonomous airplanes.
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you do know that +80% of all aviation accidents are due to the idiot behind the yoke?...in other words....."Pilot Induced".

Automating the pilot functions does reduce risk of human error...behind the yoke. Mechanical errors still remain....as do new failure modes from the automation. So risk is reduced....hence the "gain" from automation.
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
you do know that +80% of all aviation accidents are due to the idiot behind the yoke?...in other words....."Pilot Induced".
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Yes, but the "pilot induced" error rate is infinitesimally small at this point, so I really don't see the advantage to reduce an already tiny accident rate.

Checkout_my_Six said:
Automating the pilot functions does reduce risk of human error...behind the yoke. Mechanical errors still remain....as do new failure modes from the automation. So risk is reduced....hence the "gain" from automation.
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Also (and I think I've made this point before) is the error in your logic for the second point. You don't know if the reduction in human error will be greater or less than the errors that mechanical/automation errors create and there is no human there to keep it from becoming worse.

For those who don't fly large, complicated turbine aircraft, you'd be surprised at how many times the automation goes "wonky" and only through human intervention is it corrected. The many times I've had an autopilot disconnect on it's own, the many times I've had an FMS decide that it didn't want to go to the waypoint I just programmed a "Direct-To" and turned away from it, or how many times I had to sit through a Cat III ILS autoland because a previous crew had written up that their Cat III was unsat. Only through human intervention were these situations solved and didn't become worse.

And I'm not talking about older airplanes. I'm talking fresh out of the factory 777s. The engineers and programmers did their jobs the best they can, I'm assuming, and yet still got it wrong in some instances.

Here's clips from our company's B777 bulletins.

B777%20Bull%201.jpg

So, if you hit these "rare set of circumstances" when you are trying to update the descent winds prior to starting down, you lose all your FMS data. Time to pull out the chart, and do some of that old-school, human-like piloting...

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

B777%20Bull%202.jpg


Here's a great feature that the software engineers left in the code... you're tooling around on the taxiway at JFK in the conga line number 15 for departure sitting behind a Lufthansa A380, just BSing with your FO and the plane decided that you have hit the TOGA switches and decides to set takeoff power and you now have 220,000 pounds of thrust jetting you towards the plane in front of you. Awesome!

Boeing's solution... "hey human... keep your hand on the thrust levers to keep them from going to takeoff power, please while we rewrite some code."

______________________________________________________________________________________________________
B777%20Bull%203.jpg

B777%20Bull%203%20p2.jpg

And not last and not least... here's where the programmers have the plane make uncommanded turns to nowhere in particular if you happen to enter a route offset or a direct-to at the wrong time. But the good news is that they "partially corrected" the problem... bad news in they created a "new anomaly."

Resolution is: the human element should put the plane in heading mode, select the heading that complies with your clearance, try another direct-to, try LNAV again.




My point for all this is that those who think that computers and automation is a panacea for the human error in modern aviation, is that there is so much that goes on behind the curtain that I think requires the human element in the cockpit to protect against the unknowns and limitations of that automation.
 
this is not born out in the UAS world...yes there are a few big iron UAS flying around. Automation has improved safety. It also transfers to the cockpit.

The next step to improving aviation safety is taking the human out of the loop....

It's a progression that will lead to single pilot operations....and eventually remove the last pilot.

Sluggo63 said:
Yes, but the "pilot induced" error rate is infinitesimally small at this point, so I really don't see the advantage to reduce an already tiny accident rate.

Also (and I think I've made this point before) is the error in your logic for the second point. You don't know if the reduction in human error will be greater or less than the errors that mechanical/automation errors create and there is no human there to keep it from becoming worse.
For those who don't fly large, complicated turbine aircraft, you'd be surprised at how many times the automation goes "wonky" and only through human intervention is it corrected. The many times I've had an autopilot disconnect on it's own, the many times I've had an FMS decide that it didn't want to go to the waypoint I just programmed a "Direct-To" and turned away from it, or how many times I had to sit through a Cat III ILS autoland because a previous crew had written up that their Cat III was unsat. Only through human intervention were these situations solved and didn't become worse.

And I'm not talking about older airplanes. I'm talking fresh out of the factory 777s. The engineers and programmers did their jobs the best they can, I'm assuming, and yet still got it wrong in some instances.
My point for all this is that those who think that computers and automation is a panacea for the human error in modern aviation, is that there is so much that goes on behind the curtain that I think requires the human element in the cockpit to protect against the unknowns and limitations of that automation.
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Sluggo63 said:
...Also (and I think I've made this point before) is the error in your logic for the second point. You don't know if the reduction in human error will be greater or less than the errors that mechanical/automation errors create and there is no human there to keep it from becoming worse.

For those who don't fly large, complicated turbine aircraft, you'd be surprised at how many times the automation goes "wonky" and only through human intervention is it corrected. The many times I've had an autopilot disconnect on it's own, the many times I've had an FMS decide that it didn't want to go to the waypoint I just programmed a "Direct-To" and turned away from it, or how many times I had to sit through a Cat III ILS autoland because a previous crew had written up that their Cat III was unsat. Only through human intervention were these situations solved and didn't become worse.

And I'm not talking about older airplanes. I'm talking fresh out of the factory 777s. The engineers and programmers did their jobs the best they can, I'm assuming, and yet still got it wrong in some instances.

Here's clips from our company's B777 bulletins.

B777%20Bull%201.jpg

So, if you hit these "rare set of circumstances" when you are trying to update the descent winds prior to starting down, you lose all your FMS data. Time to pull out the chart, and do some of that old-school, human-like piloting...

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

B777%20Bull%202.jpg


Here's a great feature that the software engineers left in the code... you're tooling around on the taxiway at JFK in the conga line number 15 for departure sitting behind a Lufthansa A380, just BSing with your FO and the plane decided that you have hit the TOGA switches and decides to set takeoff power and you now have 220,000 pounds of thrust jetting you towards the plane in front of you. Awesome!

Boeing's solution... "hey human... keep your hand on the thrust levers to keep them from going to takeoff power, please while we rewrite some code."

______________________________________________________________________________________________________
B777%20Bull%203.jpg

B777%20Bull%203%20p2.jpg

And not last and not least... here's where the programmers have the plane make uncommanded turns to nowhere in particular if you happen to enter a route offset or a direct-to at the wrong time. But the good news is that they "partially corrected" the problem... bad news in they created a "new anomaly."

Resolution is: the human element should put the plane in heading mode, select the heading that complies with your clearance, try another direct-to, try LNAV again.




My point for all this is that those who think that computers and automation is a panacea for the human error in modern aviation, is that there is so much that goes on behind the curtain that I think requires the human element in the cockpit to protect against the unknowns and limitations of that automation.
Click to expand...
When I was working as an engineer in the semiconductor equipment industry, I got a laugh when I saw that Intel's specification for inspection equipment that they bought from us included a requirement for "bug-free code." On equipment of such complexity, the number of scenarios that one would have to test in order to guarantee that might be infinite, and even if it's not, there's no way to know whether you have found all the bugs.

People who have unlimited faith in technology seem unaware of the limitations of software testing.
 
Palmpilot said:
How are you going to take humans out of the software development loop?
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Easy....software reliability testing....;)


btw....what do you suppose that single pilot will be doing?....demonstration testing right? :D
 
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Palmpilot said:
How are you going to take humans out of the software development loop?
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The completely automated cockpit will happen. When ?, I cannot predict , except to say it will happen. Remember we have commercial rockets that land themselves on a small platform, upright , in the ocean. The question is not if, but when.

Cheers
 
nj-pilot said:
Reading through another post about someone who aspires to be a commercial pilot, and I have to wonder whether that will even be a profession in 15 or 20 years. If you think about driverless car technology and our already-high utilization of the auto-pilot in commercial aviation, am I insane to think that it's foreseeable in our lives that human pilots will become obsolete?

Related story here, though I'm sure there are many others.
I know that trucking and shipping carriers are exploring this as well.
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I was once told the cockpit of the future will have one pilot and a dog... the pilot to monitor the automated system and the dog to bite them if they touch anything. :D
 
ralarcon said:
The completely automated cockpit will happen. When ?, I cannot predict , except to say it will happen. Remember we have commercial rockets that land themselves on a small platform, upright , in the ocean. The question is not if, but when.

Cheers
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Which doesn't answer my question.
 
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