6 ms·

A plane makes an autonomous landing

35 points by prostoalex 7y ago

jacknews 7y ago
"Now it would be natural to think that with the sophisticated autopilot systems that we have today, a plane could land itself quite easily. And that’s kind of true " Indeed, I believe a substantial portion of commercial flights are actually landed automatically (contrary to what the article claims). Bravo for doing it autonomously though, it's obviously the next step.
- bronco21016 7y ago
  Contrary to popular belief, autoland systems are not used that frequently, at least in the US. Typically the only time autoland is accomplished is when the pilots or aircraft need a practice run for currency or weather conditions actually dictate its use. Autoland is required for CAT II and III approaches on the aircraft I operate. CAT II weather minimums are 100-200 ft decision height and 1,800 RVR for many operators. CAT III is even lower. If the weather is greater than that autoland typically is not going to be used. This system is very interesting though for small aircraft. As the article states, small aircraft often fly into small fields that may not have as much precision landing equipment on the runway. I could see this system being an excellent augmentation system or an additional input in the pilot’s planning of the approach and landing. [EDIT] clarity about CAT II and III
  - jackfraser 7y ago
    > 50 ft decision height What does that mean?
    - detaro 7y ago
      The height at which the pilot has to abort the landing attempt if they can't visually confirm that they're correctly set up for landing.
    - bronco21016 7y ago
      I was actually mistaken. That’s for a CATIII. CAT II is actually 100-200ft. That’s how low the reported cloud bases can be.
  - hedgehog 7y ago
    Small aircraft also tend to have less experienced pilots, so more help managing the complexity of the landing could reduce incidents like this one in Houston (stall leading to crash during go around): https://www.flyingmag.com/aftermath-cirrus-crash-june-2016/ https://www.flyingmag.com/aftermath-cirrus-crash-june-2016/
  - jillesvangurp 7y ago
    You can tell/guess sometimes. An auto landing would feel kind of rough. The reason for this is that a rough landing removes enough energy to make a bounce unlikely and that would be undesirable as recovering from those is a bit tricky. The gear can handle it. So they intentionally plant it down firmly instead of "greasing it in". Takeoffs and landings are pretty much the only point where commercial aviation involves any manual flying at all these days. Autonomous flight will likely go through years of testing and scrutiny before it will be considered safe. But technically it's not fundamentally any harder than a self driving car. I could see this help reduce work loads for pilots short term.
    - p_l 7y ago
      There is a huge fundamental difference - you can't stop on the curb and send SOS when something breaks. There's no margin for error.
      - _-___________-_ 7y ago
        Of course there are margins for error. They're just smaller.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  The article doesn't spell out why Category IIIc (the mode in which the "decision height" is zero and the computers will put the plane down even if there is literally no visibility at all) isn't used in practice. The reason is: ok, now your plane is on a runway, we all agree that's good, but what next? You can't see, that's why you need Category IIIc rather than just Category IIIb which is sometimes done in bad weather. So you can't taxi the plane off the runway safely. Your ground controllers can't see you either. This is strictly better than not being able to land, but that's all. So Cat IIIc (and to some extent even other Cat III landings) come into their own when the busiest airports can safely handle ground operations in all weathers, which may never happen.
jdavis703 7y ago
I’m not sure how useful this is when the weather visibility is poor, there’s an obstruction on the runway or it’s dark. But what could be useful is using this to serve as an additional alert for when a pilot is performing a bad landing. For example, could this have been helpful in the Asiana flight 214 crash at SFO?
- bronco21016 7y ago
  Thermal imaging systems can typically get better visibility through the moisture. I do agree, however, this certainly won’t be replacing an ILS any time soon. This system would be an excellent input to the pilot for managing glide path when the ILS system is inoperative. The PAPI (precision approach path indicator) light system also provides guidance but it’s not a very tight path.
code4tee 7y ago
The article sort of disses traditional landing guidance systems but misses the point of these. Specifically that such instrument approaches are used because one can’t see the runway at all. Thus a system that relies on cameras to land is academically interesting but not all that practical. Also with the advent of GPS-WAAS based LPV approaches one doesn’t need equipment on the field and a high precision 3D approach path can be created anywhere. As for replacing pilots for “autonomous” aircraft a pilot friend of mine said to ask actual pilots if they’d get on board a fully self flying aircraft and you’d be hard pressed to find one. As he put it, the automation on planes is amazing and a big help but it does mess up and when it does the automation can crap out big time. For the foreseeable future there’s still no replacement for a qualified pilot at the controls ready to take over. Finally there’s a lot of debate in the aviation community that too much automation actually decreases safety because pilots not flying enough manually lose skills. See the SFO accident with the Asiana airliner that crashed for no other reason than the ILS was down so they couldn’t fly with the autopilot. They crashed short of the runway on a simply manual landing in perfect weather because they couldn’t fly the plane properly! The landing in the article was a really cool experiment though.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  I'd fly hundreds of domestic flights on an un-fixed 737 Max before I'd fly a single flight on a pilot-less airplane at this point in the state of technology.
  - bdavis__ 7y ago
    s/hundreds/thousands/ same for self driving cars. software quality is too low.
    - Buttons840 7y ago
      They weren't suppose to take "move fast and break things" literally! (It's really weird how "literally" has two literally opposite meanings.)
      - 7y ago
sandworm101 7y ago
Totally incorrect title by techcrunch. This is in no way the first, not by three decades. Russian SPACEplane makes autonomous landing in massive crosswind: (1988) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)
- orbital-decay 7y ago
  Huh? Not really, Buran used instrument approach and landing, assisted by the Vympel-N system on the ground, just like Shuttle or any other aircraft. The only relatively innovative thing in the Buran EDL sequence was the fully automated decision making procedure which enabled the divert maneuver. (you're probably thinking of this when calling it autonomous)
- gpvos 7y ago
  It's not clear from your reference (and I've read a few of the further references) how Buran determined where to land exactly. Was there really no signalling from the ground present, as in the featured article?
zackbloom 7y ago
There are a lot of people in this thread putting down the idea of an autonomous plane, but frankly, as a pilot it is a much easier environment to automate than driving. In the world of instrument flying there is very little to hit which isn't clearly charted, you have an external navigator to keep you clear of most other planes (Air Traffic Control), and the landing environment is kept very normalized by the hard work of the FAA. This is orders of magnitude simpler to pull off than self driving cars, and it might save the General Aviation industry.
- p_l 7y ago
  The problem is handling failures. We could do automatic landings back when the British introduced Autoland, and in fact any serious autonomous landing will use ILS as the backbone. The problem is that we barely got to the point where an autonomous plane was capable of reasoning enough to do a go-around, but I have zero belief that it would handle failures in other ways than "crash in unoccupied terrain" (if there's any).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
souterrain 7y ago
> A plane can land automatically using ILS and other systems, but it’s rare and, even when they do it, it isn’t truly autonomous — it’s more like the airport is flying the plane by wire. This is a misunderstanding of ILS. ILS provides inputs to the pilot and the instruments on board. It’s not like fly-by-wire at all.
redis_mlc 7y ago
Like usual, I don't even know where to start with the ill-informed HN comments on aviation ... This was a landing on a blue-sky day in a country, Germany, with almost no airports compared to the USA. So although handy for a "pinch-hitter" type emergency landing in broad daylight with one airport and one runway in sight, otherwise it's of little practical use. Also, any landing attempt has 2 outcomes: a landing or a go-around. If the tower says at 50' AGL, "there's a deer on the runway, go around." what would this system do exactly? Note that some biz jets do have synthetic vision now that can be used in IMC, but not trainers.
joshvm 7y ago
How do modern HUDs overlay the runway? For example even the Shuttle displayed a runway outline during landing [1]. Is it just really good position determination or is it computer vision? I assume once you're on the localiser the aircraft has a pretty good idea of the runway geometry. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8W4cfIyNvts https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8W4cfIyNvts
StephanWolkow 7y ago
Here you can find the initial press releases and the demonstration videos press releases: https://magazin.tu-braunschweig.de/pi-post/sichere-landungen-ohne-navigationshilfen-am-boden/ https://magazin.tu-braunschweig.de/pi-post/sichere-landungen... https://www.tum.de/nc/en/about-tum/news/press-releases/details/35556/ https://www.tum.de/nc/en/about-tum/news/press-releases/detai... Demonstration videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPFC7Ki2JT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPFC7Ki2JT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAnzcNrenCU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAnzcNrenCU

35 points by prostoalex 7y ago

"Now it would be natural to think that with the sophisticated autopilot systems that we have today, a plane could land itself quite easily. And that’s kind of true " Indeed, I believe a substantial portion of commercial flights are actually landed automatically (contrary to what the article claims). Bravo for doing it autonomously though, it's obviously the next step.

bronco21016 7y ago
Contrary to popular belief, autoland systems are not used that frequently, at least in the US. Typically the only time autoland is accomplished is when the pilots or aircraft need a practice run for currency or weather conditions actually dictate its use. Autoland is required for CAT II and III approaches on the aircraft I operate. CAT II weather minimums are 100-200 ft decision height and 1,800 RVR for many operators. CAT III is even lower. If the weather is greater than that autoland typically is not going to be used. This system is very interesting though for small aircraft. As the article states, small aircraft often fly into small fields that may not have as much precision landing equipment on the runway. I could see this system being an excellent augmentation system or an additional input in the pilot’s planning of the approach and landing. [EDIT] clarity about CAT II and III
- jackfraser 7y ago
  > 50 ft decision height What does that mean?
  - detaro 7y ago
    The height at which the pilot has to abort the landing attempt if they can't visually confirm that they're correctly set up for landing.
  - bronco21016 7y ago
    I was actually mistaken. That’s for a CATIII. CAT II is actually 100-200ft. That’s how low the reported cloud bases can be.
- hedgehog 7y ago
  Small aircraft also tend to have less experienced pilots, so more help managing the complexity of the landing could reduce incidents like this one in Houston (stall leading to crash during go around): https://www.flyingmag.com/aftermath-cirrus-crash-june-2016/ https://www.flyingmag.com/aftermath-cirrus-crash-june-2016/
- jillesvangurp 7y ago
  You can tell/guess sometimes. An auto landing would feel kind of rough. The reason for this is that a rough landing removes enough energy to make a bounce unlikely and that would be undesirable as recovering from those is a bit tricky. The gear can handle it. So they intentionally plant it down firmly instead of "greasing it in". Takeoffs and landings are pretty much the only point where commercial aviation involves any manual flying at all these days. Autonomous flight will likely go through years of testing and scrutiny before it will be considered safe. But technically it's not fundamentally any harder than a self driving car. I could see this help reduce work loads for pilots short term.
  - p_l 7y ago
    There is a huge fundamental difference - you can't stop on the curb and send SOS when something breaks. There's no margin for error.
    - _-___________-_ 7y ago
      Of course there are margins for error. They're just smaller.
tialaramex 7y ago
The article doesn't spell out why Category IIIc (the mode in which the "decision height" is zero and the computers will put the plane down even if there is literally no visibility at all) isn't used in practice. The reason is: ok, now your plane is on a runway, we all agree that's good, but what next? You can't see, that's why you need Category IIIc rather than just Category IIIb which is sometimes done in bad weather. So you can't taxi the plane off the runway safely. Your ground controllers can't see you either. This is strictly better than not being able to land, but that's all. So Cat IIIc (and to some extent even other Cat III landings) come into their own when the busiest airports can safely handle ground operations in all weathers, which may never happen.

jdavis703 7y ago

I’m not sure how useful this is when the weather visibility is poor, there’s an obstruction on the runway or it’s dark. But what could be useful is using this to serve as an additional alert for when a pilot is performing a bad landing. For example, could this have been helpful in the Asiana flight 214 crash at SFO?

bronco21016 7y ago
Thermal imaging systems can typically get better visibility through the moisture. I do agree, however, this certainly won’t be replacing an ILS any time soon. This system would be an excellent input to the pilot for managing glide path when the ILS system is inoperative. The PAPI (precision approach path indicator) light system also provides guidance but it’s not a very tight path.

code4tee 7y ago

The article sort of disses traditional landing guidance systems but misses the point of these. Specifically that such instrument approaches are used because one can’t see the runway at all. Thus a system that relies on cameras to land is academically interesting but not all that practical. Also with the advent of GPS-WAAS based LPV approaches one doesn’t need equipment on the field and a high precision 3D approach path can be created anywhere. As for replacing pilots for “autonomous” aircraft a pilot friend of mine said to ask actual pilots if they’d get on board a fully self flying aircraft and you’d be hard pressed to find one. As he put it, the automation on planes is amazing and a big help but it does mess up and when it does the automation can crap out big time. For the foreseeable future there’s still no replacement for a qualified pilot at the controls ready to take over. Finally there’s a lot of debate in the aviation community that too much automation actually decreases safety because pilots not flying enough manually lose skills. See the SFO accident with the Asiana airliner that crashed for no other reason than the ILS was down so they couldn’t fly with the autopilot. They crashed short of the runway on a simply manual landing in perfect weather because they couldn’t fly the plane properly! The landing in the article was a really cool experiment though.

sokoloff 7y ago
I'd fly hundreds of domestic flights on an un-fixed 737 Max before I'd fly a single flight on a pilot-less airplane at this point in the state of technology.
- bdavis__ 7y ago
  s/hundreds/thousands/ same for self driving cars. software quality is too low.
  - Buttons840 7y ago
    They weren't suppose to take "move fast and break things" literally! (It's really weird how "literally" has two literally opposite meanings.)
    - 7y ago

sandworm101 7y ago

Totally incorrect title by techcrunch. This is in no way the first, not by three decades. Russian SPACEplane makes autonomous landing in massive crosswind: (1988) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

orbital-decay 7y ago
Huh? Not really, Buran used instrument approach and landing, assisted by the Vympel-N system on the ground, just like Shuttle or any other aircraft. The only relatively innovative thing in the Buran EDL sequence was the fully automated decision making procedure which enabled the divert maneuver. (you're probably thinking of this when calling it autonomous)
gpvos 7y ago
It's not clear from your reference (and I've read a few of the further references) how Buran determined where to land exactly. Was there really no signalling from the ground present, as in the featured article?

zackbloom 7y ago

There are a lot of people in this thread putting down the idea of an autonomous plane, but frankly, as a pilot it is a much easier environment to automate than driving. In the world of instrument flying there is very little to hit which isn't clearly charted, you have an external navigator to keep you clear of most other planes (Air Traffic Control), and the landing environment is kept very normalized by the hard work of the FAA. This is orders of magnitude simpler to pull off than self driving cars, and it might save the General Aviation industry.

p_l 7y ago
The problem is handling failures. We could do automatic landings back when the British introduced Autoland, and in fact any serious autonomous landing will use ILS as the backbone. The problem is that we barely got to the point where an autonomous plane was capable of reasoning enough to do a go-around, but I have zero belief that it would handle failures in other ways than "crash in unoccupied terrain" (if there's any).

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

souterrain 7y ago

> A plane can land automatically using ILS and other systems, but it’s rare and, even when they do it, it isn’t truly autonomous — it’s more like the airport is flying the plane by wire. This is a misunderstanding of ILS. ILS provides inputs to the pilot and the instruments on board. It’s not like fly-by-wire at all.

redis_mlc 7y ago

Like usual, I don't even know where to start with the ill-informed HN comments on aviation ... This was a landing on a blue-sky day in a country, Germany, with almost no airports compared to the USA. So although handy for a "pinch-hitter" type emergency landing in broad daylight with one airport and one runway in sight, otherwise it's of little practical use. Also, any landing attempt has 2 outcomes: a landing or a go-around. If the tower says at 50' AGL, "there's a deer on the runway, go around." what would this system do exactly? Note that some biz jets do have synthetic vision now that can be used in IMC, but not trainers.

joshvm 7y ago

How do modern HUDs overlay the runway? For example even the Shuttle displayed a runway outline during landing [1]. Is it just really good position determination or is it computer vision? I assume once you're on the localiser the aircraft has a pretty good idea of the runway geometry. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8W4cfIyNvts https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8W4cfIyNvts

StephanWolkow 7y ago

Here you can find the initial press releases and the demonstration videos press releases: https://magazin.tu-braunschweig.de/pi-post/sichere-landungen-ohne-navigationshilfen-am-boden/ https://magazin.tu-braunschweig.de/pi-post/sichere-landungen... https://www.tum.de/nc/en/about-tum/news/press-releases/details/35556/ https://www.tum.de/nc/en/about-tum/news/press-releases/detai... Demonstration videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPFC7Ki2JT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPFC7Ki2JT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAnzcNrenCU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAnzcNrenCU