5 ms·

I've often thought they should get rid of pilots from Aircraft, and fly them by autopilot. The number of accidents caused by human error is terrifying. But als

I've often thought they should get rid of pilots from Aircraft, and fly them by autopilot. The number of accidents caused by human error is terrifying. But also have a multiply redundant remote control system for emergencies the autopilot can't handle. So if something crops up, a crew of pilots trained to deal with nothing but emergencies can take over remotely.

vowelless 13y ago
As someone working in this domain, I absolutely agree. Piloting an aircraft is also one of the riskiest jobs in the US [1]. Significant progress was recently made in fully autonomous flight [2]. [1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-of-the-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-u-s--191643548.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-of-the-most-dangerous-jobs-... [2] http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/aerial-robots/robocopters-to-the-rescue http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/aerial-robots/robocopters-...
mertd 13y ago
> The number of accidents caused by human error is terrifying. Problem is that we don't know about the number of accidents avoided thanks to human interventions. Also, remote pilots will never be sure about the reliability of information transmitted from a failing aircraft.
- SEJeff 13y ago
  I wonder if an autopilot would have landed the plane into the Hudson river, thereby saving everyone's lives? Something tells me no. If you have humans on the plane, you will need to have humans flying the plane. Yes! We should automate more to enhance the human's cognitive abilities, but no, we should not remove the human element. The human mind is still the biggest supercomputer we have when it comes to improvisation.
  - hnriot 13y ago
    Humans could have remotely landed that plane, just like they do with drones every day.
    - WalterBright 13y ago
      On water? It needed every bit of that pilot's skill, which also meant every bit of feedback about the situation was needed. No freakin' way - there's no bandwidth for that amount of information.
    - SEJeff 13y ago
      Forgot to mention, I was a UAV Pilot of the Shadow 200 TUAV in the US Army and logged about 480 combat flying hours. Here is a pic of me in a Shadow Ground Control Station in 2002ish. As a result, I know a good bit more than most about UAVs, which most people refer to as simply "drones". On Wikipedia, I'm Enigmasoldier. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_control_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_control_station
- JshWright 13y ago
  re: reliability of information... The same can be said for pilots sitting in the cockpit (see Air France 447). In some ways, having the pilots outside the plane would be an advantage in an emergency. It's much easier to trust the gauges (which is almost always the right thing to do) when you aren't experiencing any of the physical sensations in the cockpit. There have been countless cases where pilots trust their own sense of up/down/left/right (in zero visibility conditions), and ignored the relevant cockpit indicators, to disastrous result...
  - notahacker 13y ago
    In scenarios where gauges are (i) wrong or (ii) unable to communicate with a remote operator, aircraft are placed at significantly more risk of accident; sufficient to warrant human intervention for even trivial tasks. Putting the pilots on the ground turns the risk of an accident from pilot misjudgement in this situation into near certainty of an accident.
- WalterBright 13y ago
  A lot of accidents are avoided by human intervention, and often very creative "not in the book" intervention. For example, I know of one L1011 that got stuck in a nose up attitude, and the pilot regained control by having the passengers all move forward. Furthermore, pilots are far, far better at detecting that a problem even exists. There's a heluva lot of information you can get from sound, vibration, smell, the 'feel' of the stick, view out the window, etc. Heck, even going back into the cabin and eyeballing the wings and engines have saved airliners from disaster. A Concorde prevented a crash this way. Software, on the other hand, usually fails to recognize that anything has gone wrong, and pretty much never is able to correct itself, and certainly won't think of anything creative.
mortenjorck 13y ago
It's interesting how flying a plane is far more challenging for a human than driving a car, but in the same way that solving a calculus problem is far more challenging than reading the subtext of a conversation: It's totally flipped for computers, because the former is about making adjustments based on a lot of interrelated numbers while the latter is about identifying signals and making lateral connections to respond. It might be fair to say a human has to think a lot like a computer to fly a plane, while a computer has to think like a human to drive a car.
- adrianN 13y ago
  Well, you don't have kids jumping in front of your plane and the planes around you can't suddenly stop.
- quarterto 13y ago
  > solving a calculus problem is far more challenging than reading the subtext of a conversation Speak for yourself...
ballard 13y ago
Pilots are already expected to deal with all sorts of emergencies. Will never happen: 0. Guidance signal loss 1. Guidance signal jamming 2. Guidance signal hijacking 3. Pilots on the ground don't have a vested interest with passengers, so the survival instinct won't necessarily kick in because they're not there. 4. Cost of mitigating all of the above would be much more than the risks of such a drastic change.

vowelless 13y ago

As someone working in this domain, I absolutely agree. Piloting an aircraft is also one of the riskiest jobs in the US [1]. Significant progress was recently made in fully autonomous flight [2]. [1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-of-the-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-u-s--191643548.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-of-the-most-dangerous-jobs-... [2] http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/aerial-robots/robocopters-to-the-rescue http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/aerial-robots/robocopters-...

mertd 13y ago

> The number of accidents caused by human error is terrifying. Problem is that we don't know about the number of accidents avoided thanks to human interventions. Also, remote pilots will never be sure about the reliability of information transmitted from a failing aircraft.

SEJeff 13y ago
I wonder if an autopilot would have landed the plane into the Hudson river, thereby saving everyone's lives? Something tells me no. If you have humans on the plane, you will need to have humans flying the plane. Yes! We should automate more to enhance the human's cognitive abilities, but no, we should not remove the human element. The human mind is still the biggest supercomputer we have when it comes to improvisation.
- hnriot 13y ago
  Humans could have remotely landed that plane, just like they do with drones every day.
  - WalterBright 13y ago
    On water? It needed every bit of that pilot's skill, which also meant every bit of feedback about the situation was needed. No freakin' way - there's no bandwidth for that amount of information.
  - SEJeff 13y ago
    Forgot to mention, I was a UAV Pilot of the Shadow 200 TUAV in the US Army and logged about 480 combat flying hours. Here is a pic of me in a Shadow Ground Control Station in 2002ish. As a result, I know a good bit more than most about UAVs, which most people refer to as simply "drones". On Wikipedia, I'm Enigmasoldier. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_control_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_control_station
JshWright 13y ago
re: reliability of information... The same can be said for pilots sitting in the cockpit (see Air France 447). In some ways, having the pilots outside the plane would be an advantage in an emergency. It's much easier to trust the gauges (which is almost always the right thing to do) when you aren't experiencing any of the physical sensations in the cockpit. There have been countless cases where pilots trust their own sense of up/down/left/right (in zero visibility conditions), and ignored the relevant cockpit indicators, to disastrous result...
- notahacker 13y ago
  In scenarios where gauges are (i) wrong or (ii) unable to communicate with a remote operator, aircraft are placed at significantly more risk of accident; sufficient to warrant human intervention for even trivial tasks. Putting the pilots on the ground turns the risk of an accident from pilot misjudgement in this situation into near certainty of an accident.
WalterBright 13y ago
A lot of accidents are avoided by human intervention, and often very creative "not in the book" intervention. For example, I know of one L1011 that got stuck in a nose up attitude, and the pilot regained control by having the passengers all move forward. Furthermore, pilots are far, far better at detecting that a problem even exists. There's a heluva lot of information you can get from sound, vibration, smell, the 'feel' of the stick, view out the window, etc. Heck, even going back into the cabin and eyeballing the wings and engines have saved airliners from disaster. A Concorde prevented a crash this way. Software, on the other hand, usually fails to recognize that anything has gone wrong, and pretty much never is able to correct itself, and certainly won't think of anything creative.

mortenjorck 13y ago

It's interesting how flying a plane is far more challenging for a human than driving a car, but in the same way that solving a calculus problem is far more challenging than reading the subtext of a conversation: It's totally flipped for computers, because the former is about making adjustments based on a lot of interrelated numbers while the latter is about identifying signals and making lateral connections to respond. It might be fair to say a human has to think a lot like a computer to fly a plane, while a computer has to think like a human to drive a car.

adrianN 13y ago
Well, you don't have kids jumping in front of your plane and the planes around you can't suddenly stop.
quarterto 13y ago
> solving a calculus problem is far more challenging than reading the subtext of a conversation Speak for yourself...

ballard 13y ago

Pilots are already expected to deal with all sorts of emergencies. Will never happen: 0. Guidance signal loss 1. Guidance signal jamming 2. Guidance signal hijacking 3. Pilots on the ground don't have a vested interest with passengers, so the survival instinct won't necessarily kick in because they're not there. 4. Cost of mitigating all of the above would be much more than the risks of such a drastic change.