4 ms·

Parts are also designed on the basis that they WILL fail at some point so the whole system can still perform WHEN this happens

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Great example: Cirrus has a new personal jet, the Vision Jet. It has a feature called Safe Return Emergency Land [1]. If the pilot is incapacitated, a passenger can press the Big Red Button to activate the system, at which point the aircraft switches to autonomous mode to select the closest airport to navigate to and auto land at. Even the pilot can fail and the system will attempt to recover from this failure mode. [1] https://cirrusaircraft.com/story/introducing-safe-return-emergency-autoland/ https://cirrusaircraft.com/story/introducing-safe-return-eme...
- skynetv2 6y ago
  Amazing tech! Thanks for sharing.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Pretty much all new commercial jets have an autoland mode. If something happens to the pilots get into the cockpit (this is the hard part!) fast put on a headset, find the push to talk button and yell help. You need to be fast enough that the radio frequency to use hasn't changed (this is almost as hard as getting in!) as the plane moved on, but if you get a response whoever it is will get in contact with control for you and from there on they will tell you what buttons to push. Of course if you are in an old airplane (private plane, or legally retired but still in use in some poor country) all bets are off.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    The revolution in this product is that it's available to general aviation users and the UX is "push button to land". It'll even squawk 7700 and announce intentions on 121.5 [1]. [1] https://www.faasafety.gov/SPANS/noticeView.aspx?nid=11667 https://www.faasafety.gov/SPANS/noticeView.aspx?nid=11667
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    "Autoland" in an airliner is nothing like this. It performs the actual landing (and in some cases part of roll out) only. The airliner's designers assume that since their planes are designed to be used only with at least two fully trained pilots there is no reason to worry about scenarios in which a non-pilot is now in charge. Those simply don't happen. Is it possible that they could talk a civilian down in an otherwise perfectly functional jet airliner given the pilots both are totally unavailable? Yes, but it'd be really hard and I would not give them great odds for it working. Plenty of random non-pilots won't even successfully work an airliner's radio, if you end up talking to yourself, or the passenger cabin, that doesn't help you. In contrast what Safe Return Emergency does is really one button "Oops, the pilot is unconscious/ dead, fix it". It has the same reassuring "Don't touch the controls" you get from Waymo cars. The SRE system is flying the plane, you can best help by staying calm and maybe trying to fix the pilot if that possible. It will figure out where there's a viable landing strip it can reach, broadcast its intentions to nearby humans, fly to its chosen strip, set up, perform the landing, roll out, stop and shut down the plane.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      I agree that it isn't easy. However in fair weather gentel adjustments to the controls (preferably the auto pilot ) will get you close enough. Control towers will clear your path so you having a fighting chance of walking away. Mostly the training is for small planes where there is one pilot. Pushing a button is or course a lot easier. I don't want to diminishing that. However most of us can't afford the type of plane ticket where it is needed, first class on a commercial flight is an order of magnitude cheaper. Thus the odds of both pilots dead is much higher, and so knowing there is still hope may be useful.

toomuchtodo 6y ago

Great example: Cirrus has a new personal jet, the Vision Jet. It has a feature called Safe Return Emergency Land [1]. If the pilot is incapacitated, a passenger can press the Big Red Button to activate the system, at which point the aircraft switches to autonomous mode to select the closest airport to navigate to and auto land at. Even the pilot can fail and the system will attempt to recover from this failure mode. [1] https://cirrusaircraft.com/story/introducing-safe-return-emergency-autoland/ https://cirrusaircraft.com/story/introducing-safe-return-eme...

skynetv2 6y ago
Amazing tech! Thanks for sharing.
bluGill 6y ago
Pretty much all new commercial jets have an autoland mode. If something happens to the pilots get into the cockpit (this is the hard part!) fast put on a headset, find the push to talk button and yell help. You need to be fast enough that the radio frequency to use hasn't changed (this is almost as hard as getting in!) as the plane moved on, but if you get a response whoever it is will get in contact with control for you and from there on they will tell you what buttons to push. Of course if you are in an old airplane (private plane, or legally retired but still in use in some poor country) all bets are off.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  The revolution in this product is that it's available to general aviation users and the UX is "push button to land". It'll even squawk 7700 and announce intentions on 121.5 [1]. [1] https://www.faasafety.gov/SPANS/noticeView.aspx?nid=11667 https://www.faasafety.gov/SPANS/noticeView.aspx?nid=11667
- tialaramex 6y ago
  "Autoland" in an airliner is nothing like this. It performs the actual landing (and in some cases part of roll out) only. The airliner's designers assume that since their planes are designed to be used only with at least two fully trained pilots there is no reason to worry about scenarios in which a non-pilot is now in charge. Those simply don't happen. Is it possible that they could talk a civilian down in an otherwise perfectly functional jet airliner given the pilots both are totally unavailable? Yes, but it'd be really hard and I would not give them great odds for it working. Plenty of random non-pilots won't even successfully work an airliner's radio, if you end up talking to yourself, or the passenger cabin, that doesn't help you. In contrast what Safe Return Emergency does is really one button "Oops, the pilot is unconscious/ dead, fix it". It has the same reassuring "Don't touch the controls" you get from Waymo cars. The SRE system is flying the plane, you can best help by staying calm and maybe trying to fix the pilot if that possible. It will figure out where there's a viable landing strip it can reach, broadcast its intentions to nearby humans, fly to its chosen strip, set up, perform the landing, roll out, stop and shut down the plane.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    I agree that it isn't easy. However in fair weather gentel adjustments to the controls (preferably the auto pilot ) will get you close enough. Control towers will clear your path so you having a fighting chance of walking away. Mostly the training is for small planes where there is one pilot. Pushing a button is or course a lot easier. I don't want to diminishing that. However most of us can't afford the type of plane ticket where it is needed, first class on a commercial flight is an order of magnitude cheaper. Thus the odds of both pilots dead is much higher, and so knowing there is still hope may be useful.