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FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics
- java-man 6y agoIt's only a matter of time. However, how will the robotic plances integrate with existing voice-based air traffic control? Would there be a new digital channel, or the planes would it use an on-board voice recognition and synthesizer?
- gpm 6y agoIf I was doing this I would start with remotely "piloting" (sending instructions to) them and having the remote pilot communicate with ATC via the traditional radio channel.
- alfalfasprout 6y agoWhat if radio communications are lost? This is not a super infrequent occurrence
- java-man 6y agoRight, but that requires a fairly reliable radio link (that we don't have, e.g. MH370). Or perhaps a set of dedicated routes, with ATC actively routing other traffic around the robots?
- alfalfasprout 6y agoThat would require radar contact along the whole route. Otherwise if a transponder stops working you suddenly have a ghost aircraft capable of causing massive amounts of damage.
- gpm 6y agoSo get one. Partner with SpaceX or oneweb and plot courses only where you will have continuous connectivity. We pilot drones in warzones remotely, the technology exists to pilot then in peace time.
- jedberg 6y ago> We pilot drones in warzones remotely, True but we also are ok with those drones getting destroyed.
- keehun 6y agoThat would be quite a feat without updating the quality of the voice transmissions. When you listen to some recordings of ATC, it becomes clear pretty quickly that context clues is paramount to being able to communicate with ATC. Some of the transmissions are so difficult to hear it amazes me that humans can even communicate through it. Perhaps a lot of that is cabin noise, and without it, the transmissions would become a lot clearer.
- alfalfasprout 6y agoFor what it’s worth the radio transmissions sound quite a bit more clear (usually) in the plane. LiveATC uses ground stations which don’t always have great reception and they compress the audio like crazy. I can barely make out what they say on LiveATC sometimes but in the air it’s rarely a problem.
- keehun 6y agoThat's what I was hoping is the case. Good to know!
- sokoloff 6y agoAgreed. The radio comms are also generally following a fairly predictable pattern of information. If you suddenly transmitted "and I'll have a BLT on rye, hold the mayo", you're almost certainly going to be asked "say again?"
- ertemplin 6y agoIf the airplane isn't in the clouds and is below 18,000 feet MSL the pilots are still responsible for seeing and avoiding other traffic. There are a lot of places in the USA that don't have ATC radar coverage, so traffic separation is based almost entirely on see-and-avoid and cloud distance laws for VFR pilots. The ATC problem is probably the easiest one to solve, and there are already some solutions in use like D-ATIS and automated pre-departure clearance (PDC).
- sokoloff 6y agoIf that airplane isn't in clouds and is at/above FL180, pilots are still required to maintain vigilance to see-and-avoid other traffic. It's true that positive separation is also provided by IFR rules in class A airspace, but any time you're in visual conditions, you're expected to see-and-avoid. FAR 91.113.b: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.113 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.113
- alfalfasprout 6y agoFrankly the tech for autonomous aviation has been around for a while now. I expect even strong crosswind landings will soon be better handled by a computer than a pilot. But then here’s the problem... Autonomous systems are great when things are going well, but at the end of the day they fare very poorly in edge cases sometimes with catastrophic results. When you’re driving a car you usually follow traffic rules and stop lights to get to your destination safely. In an airplane there’s constant communication and things change frequently based on weather, traffic, emergencies, etc. I can’t count the number of times ATC has repeated back an incorrect call sign. As a human we know it was probably meant for us and call back to confirm. Would a computer do that? Even if we used datalink communications then ATC would now have a much higher burden. Also human pilots would lose the situational awareness of hearing instructions for other aircraft on frequency. Then there’s the question of— in an emergency situation is the computer going to be able to make the right judgement calls? What if its sensors are iced over/inop? All in all, while technologically I feel this could have been pulled off yesterday, I doubt we will see fully autonomous aircraft operating long routes in controlled airspace anytime soon.
- liability 6y agoAlong these lines, would an autopilot ever think of landing in the Hudson? (Particularly if it hadn't been done before?)
- java-man 6y agoOne side benefit of using robotic planes (in theory) is that the fleet can be OTA'd to include emergency water landings, once the models are updated.
- hanniabu 6y agoDevil's advocate: Would a human pilot be skilled and lucky enough to pull this off a second time?
- sokoloff 6y agoIMO, the critical thing the human crew did in US1549 was the decision to take the Hudson; once they decided that, most crews could pull off the execution of that decision. (Then the presence/absence of boat traffic comes down to luck.)
- dmix 6y agoWho do people think will have their jobs replaced first, cargo pilots or truck drivers? One big factor is it often comes down to which worker group has a stronger union and likewise entrenched political interests at local levels, as we've seen in technological progress elsewhere. Second to that is probably the safety regulatory process. 'AI' or computer automation has also been used heavily in airplanes for a long time so that regulatory process is probably going to happen much more advanced than cars. Finally, driving regulations often happen at a much more local level (cities can ban AI drivers in their borders for ex) but flights are divided over much wider geographical lines. And there are far fewer airline companies than truck companies to deal with.
- godelski 6y agoMy bet is actually on Jevons Paradox.
- jpalmer 6y ago> One big factor is it often comes down to which worker group has a stronger union Exactly this. For reference see why there are still humans on cargo trains.
- marcosdumay 6y agoThe "cost of the pilot" / "cost of the operation" metric gives us this order: urban transportation, inter-city ground transportation, air transportation, water transportation. The difficulty of automating it metric gives us this order: air transportation, water transportation, inter-city ground transportation, urban transportation. So I'm personally expecting a mix: air transportation, inter-city ground transportation, water transportation, urban transportation.
- tintor 6y agoWhy do you believe that water transportation would be harder to automate than air transportation?
- marcosdumay 6y ago
- loceng 6y agoThere needs to be a pollution (including noise) tax collected to counterweight the inevitable of potentially non-stop swarm of buzzing that will be making 10,000s to 100,000s of deliveries in cities everyday.
- ceejayoz 6y agoThis is a cargo plane, not a buzzy quadcopter drone. They already fly these routes; they just use human pilots to do so.
- evanlivingston 6y agoAnd they're already loud. If they proliferate, whether human operated or autonomous, the noise will increase. +1 vote for heavily regulating noise pollution.
- ceejayoz 6y agoNoise pollution from airports is regulated. Many airports have departure patterns that avoid areas sensitive to noise. Drones are going to need similar regulation, I agree.
- lozaning 6y agoShout out SNA, which has a spectacular departure flight path to ensure compliance with back bay NIMBYS who showed up after the airport was already built.
- chickenpotpie 6y agoI would prefer if it was legally required to be below a certain amount or you can’t do it at all. Perhaps you can purchase decibel credits. If I can’t sleep at night it doesn’t make me any happier to know that the city is getting more revenue.
- projektfu 6y agoWe need to find a drone motor that produces more laminar and less turbulent flow than the current ducted fans do.
- whiddershins 6y agoIf FedEx and Amazon set up private airports dedicated to these machines, only put cargo in them, and make their flight routes distinct from other aircraft, I imagine this could be up and running faster than people think. Edge cases shouldn’t result in loss of life, so getting through regulations and insuring should be much easier than other situations.
- emteycz 6y agoDon't forget that aircraft falls on someone or someone's property.
- oliveshell 6y agoTo be fair, maintaining straight and level flight— i.e., not falling out of the sky— is the easiest part of flying an airplane. Computers have been good at that for a while; in fact, that’s how airline flights are controlled these days during basically all of cruise flight (by autopilot). Takeoff and landing are the tricky parts. (I say this as someone who’s firmly on the skeptical side of the spectrum regarding the near-term prospects for fully autonomous vehicle control.)
- HaloZero 6y agoIsn't turbulence hard to predict? Could something cause an issue. I always assume pilot take over or at least monitor things more aggressively when the plane starts shaking a lot.
- manigandham 6y agoTurbulence doesn't mean loss of control. It's just rough air for a bit, and computers can manage through it. Modern passenger/cargo planes are designed to be naturally stable (positive static stability) in flight so that disturbances are dampened out. Bigger issues like bad weather and other traffic would likely be programmed well in advance rather than leave that to real-time decisions.
- 6y ago
- cbanek 6y agoBig congrats to my former SpaceX colleagues! Well done!
- jessriedel 6y agoCan anyone put this in context as a technical achievement? Hasn't pilotless takeoff and landing been demonstrated before?
- bobbriody 6y agoWe're hiring! https://reliable.co/careers/ https://reliable.co/careers/ We built avionics, software, mechanisms and a comm system that enables automated operation of the plane from a remote command station. The remote operator has a GUI where they can command the aircraft. This article goes into a bit more detail about how it works: https://www.flightglobal.com/airframers/with-tesla-and-spacex-credentials-start-up-flies-pilotless-caravan/139905.article https://www.flightglobal.com/airframers/with-tesla-and-space...
- zaphirplane 6y agoI find it strange that autonomous car driving innovations are done by specialized companies and not the dominant car makers. The same for aircraft. At least the technology news bubble makes it seem so, it’s like they are waiting for someone to eat their lunch, hello Walkman and camera
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoNo remote positions?
- bobbriody 6y agoSome positions require on-site but we're open to remote and have quite a few remote folks already.
- cbsks 6y agoWhich positions can be remote? All the positions on the website say they are located in Mountain View.
- geocrasher 6y agoI'd like to ask a question that I'm curious about and I'm sure some others are too: What does it take to be a remote UAV pilot in a civilian setting? What kind of training or experience are looked for or are required? I'm sure there are many armchair pilots and RC enthusiasts who have similar questions.
- 6y ago
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoAutonomous flight is a great example of the 80/20 rule. We've basically had "self flying" airplanes for decades, but to get them to 100% autonomous we need to spend all of the extra engineering effort into covering the remaining edge-cases + landing.
- paulmd 6y agothis statement belies a lack of understanding of just how long autoland has existed. Guess which decade autoland was invented... and what decade commercial service flights began making fully autonomous landings... (you're probably wrong) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland#Civil_aviation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland#Civil_aviation It is not, on the whole, that difficult a problem to actually land an aircraft autonomously. Now that planes can autonomously fly the rest of the route too, it makes sense to just take the pilot out of the cockpit.
- outworlder 6y ago> It is not, on the whole, that difficult a problem to actually land an aircraft autonomously. Sure, if you have ILS and it's operational. Large aircraft will not rely on GPS. It's a far more difficult problem to integrate such aircraft among the existing traffic. You are underestimating the effort of autonomous flight gate to gate.
- supernova87a 6y agoMy understanding was that the autonomous part is not really the barrier at this point. After all, military drones fly around the world already (for 10 years) and there are strong analogues in civilian flight/aircraft. The problem is "airspace integration", i.e. how does an unmanned aircraft communicate with other pilots, ground, etc. and what are the rules (right of way, visual separation, etc) with planes in lower classes of airspace. That problem has also been around for 10 years, and I would say nearly no progress has been made on that front. If there were progress on that (some kind of regulatory solution/certainty), it would unlock a whole lot of activity here.
- mcculley 6y agoThe future value of another career formerly recommended by high school guidance counselors is eliminated.
- unionemployee 6y agoAs a mid-thirties airline pilot, these articles make me wonder if I should re-skill now or ride it out.
- jillesvangurp 6y agoIt will take long for this to change the industry and there are a lot of planes that will be flown manually for decades to come. But obviously it doesn't hurt to have a plan B. I actually expect that short term there will be an increased demand for pilots as smaller electrical airplanes start becoming more popular. Most of these will be single pilot operations doing short hops. If there are going to be lots of them, there will be a need for lots of pilots too. This too will ramp up over a few decades and eventually that whole business will be autonomous. But not short term.
- wespiser_2018 6y agoVery cool! I wonder what the real economic benefit of removing a pilot from an airplane is, and what the dominant factors are? Assuming that a human pilot is better in some emergency scenarios, and might be able to save you from catastrophic loss: these events are exceedingly rare nowadays, and the savings from liability and scheduling constraints must be massive without a human in the pilot seat.
- journeymanblue 6y agoCEO of Xwing, the other company developing technology in this space here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDhkwHkBKWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDhkwHkBKWo Feeder aircraft suffer from poor pilot / aircraft utilization. Once you go with remote operators you can increase operator utilization significantly. A computer can also fly the aircraft much more efficiently than a human can allowing for significant fuel savings. Other benefits include lifting of crew rest time requirements and improved dispatch rates. Some of this allows for better asset utilization. Finally, you can also re-balance a fleet across geographies more easily to address shifting demand.
- wespiser_2018 6y agoGreat answer, thank you very much :)
- unionemployee 6y agoIn response to such events, pilots often write confident yet misinformed sounding articles such as this - https://liveandletsfly.com/airline-automation/ https://liveandletsfly.com/airline-automation/