Can Unmanned Aircraft Mix With Commercial Planes? 203
coondoggie writes "The Federal Aviation Administration this week signed a research and development agreement with GE Aviation to come up with a way to safely mix the burgeoning amounts of unmanned aircraft with commercial aviation.
With this research the FAA and GE hope to accomplish an aviation first by completing the research to facilitate flight of an Unmanned Aircraft System with an FAA certified, trajectory-based flight management system.
Integrating unmanned aircraft into the national airspace will be no easy task. The Government Accountability Office last year laid out the difficulties stating that routine unmanned aircraft access to national airspace poses technological, regulatory, workload, and coordination challenges."
No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Where's the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
I like the comforting feeling of knowing there's a pilot in the cockpit.
I like the comforting feeling of knowing there's a pilot in the cockpit of the planes flying OVER me when I'm down here on the ground.
Pilots Union/Lobby? (Score:5, Insightful)
Auto Pilot (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck with the way things are now, the Auto Pilot can nearly land a plane by itself.
The idea isn't too far off, but to an extent, we already have an "Auto flying" system currently in use.
Re:The end of private aviation (Score:2, Insightful)
For the first generation or so.
Then it will be put on a single chip and mass produced. Look at cell phones. The first ones used discrete circuits and were big and heavy.
ATC... (Score:5, Insightful)
Autopilot (Score:1, Insightful)
A great deal of commercial flight is already done automatically -- with autopilot. The only thing the pilot has to do in most cases is tell the aircraft where to go (which can be done using GPS instead). There are already planes that can take off, fly to a destination, and land using GPS and ILS. A pilot is still on board to push the buttons, but that's all he/she does unless there is a problem.
Re:Self Destruct! (Score:3, Insightful)
The unmanned aircraft should carry a self-destruct radio reciever and manned aircraft would carry a low-power transmitter.
If an unmanned aircraft comes within 1 mile of a commercial flight, it self destructs!
The transmitter could be a cheap $10 piece of equipment.
Problem. Solved. What could possibly go wrong?
All the unmanned aircraft at airports suddenly go BOOOM!! when the switch is turned on?
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do aircraft have fully autonomous co-computers that can recognize an unexpected fault and take full control of the plane? That's why commercial aircraft have co-pilots. A secondary system running the same code with the same flaws as the first doesn't cut it in this context.
Re:Auto Pilot (Score:1, Insightful)
Not just nearly, it can land completely on its own from what I understand. Essentially just program the runway, etc into the autopilot and it's done. Very little flying nowadays is done manually, the pilots are essentially just there in case something goes wrong. In theory an airliner could probably be be programmed from the ground and left to fly on its own. It probably wouldn't be a good idea though, I don't think the airliners are able to handle unexpected situations entirely on their own (yet).
Re:No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not sure what the BFD is (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if something goes wrong in the USA, the airplanes in question will be landing on US citizens and not Iraqi ones.
Re:Self Destruct! (Score:3, Insightful)
My guess is that because they don't have to worry about the safety of the occupants and they know the exact weight they would cut the margins finer on the power.
I'm sure you could build a uav with manouverability better than a fighter jet but for the majority of work UAVs do you want a plane that is optimised for other things (low speed flying, range, time in the air etc).
IIRC airliners are designed to have enough power that they can limp home with a whole engine down (though thier range is considerably reduced).
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or figure out how to make a successful landing in a river when the engines fill up with birds...
rj
Re:Not sure what the BFD is (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm wondering why there's a need for drones to interfly commercial airspace here in the US, especially when that blog also had an article about the Air Force wanting to give drones enough machine intelligence [networkworld.com] to decide for itself whether deadly force is warranted. What could possibly go wrong [ctrlaltdel-online.com] with that? Are the new drones gonna be used in the much-publicised 'War' On Drugs or something?
Take-offs are optional... (Score:2, Insightful)
I want a pilot, or airline official, on the plane that I'm on. Why? Because I want the person who makes the decision about whether or not the plane takes off to have THEIR butt on that plane too. I don't want the decision made in an office building 1,000 miles away by somebody who knows they're going home whether the plane lands wheels up or wheels down.
Re:It will take a lot more. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unmanned planes would be easier to do than unmanned cars.
We already have very good automation software for UAVs that can take off, survey, inspect, and land, mostly unassisted. If assistance is needed, such as to fire weapons, or in the event of an emergency or other engagement, it can be handled by remote by the operator. I'd expect these planes would be similar. Maybe hire some pilots and train them in unmanned systems, to handle emergencies. A human element in the system is about necessary, since it would be unreasonable to program in every possible scenario and outcome.
That being said, it'd be a lot cheaper to ditch an unmanned aircraft than it would be to ditch an airliner. Collision alarm going off due to a 747 heading towards the drone? Have the drone pull a 400G turn until there isn't a threat anymore. Worst case scenario, trigger an explosive to blow it out of the sky.
Re:Where's the issue? (Score:2, Insightful)
UAV's also have weight issues. The shadow, the one mentioned in the article, doesn't have any kind of radar, heck it doesn't even have brakes. This is due to the very reliable but fairly weak engine it uses. It's internal computer basically only handles the inertial nav system, the communications, and maintains straight and level flight. The ground control station makes all the actual decisions. If the AV loses contact with the GCS, it's preprogrammed either to return to a predesignated coordinate and fly a loiter pattern (hopefully getting signal back again on the way), or to deploy it's parachute.
In other words, nevermind avoiding another aircraft, this thing will fly into a mountain if allowed to fly itself. I believe that the reason that this aircraft is the one being selected for FAA approval is because of it's reliability at doing it's job even with it's limitations, not because of it's feature set. My unit, and many others, have never crashed one of these UAV's. Other UAV's, even more sophisticated ones, fall out of the sky all the time. While the shadow is not perfect, it is definately going to be the benchmark in the future for how rugged and simple versus how feature rich a UAV needs to be.
This isn't about safety, it's about freedom. (Score:4, Insightful)
But the important point here is: THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO DEPLOY MILITARY EQUIPMENT AGAINST U.S. CITIZENS ON DOMESTIC SOIL.
The details of the technology are secondary to this violation of Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. And, again, we can argue about how much of the act is still available to citizens, but the real point is LET'S NOT GIVE UP ANY MORE!