Can AI-Controlled Cameras Replace An Air Traffic Control Tower? (bloomberg.com) 67
London's Heathrow airport is testing a surprising new system involving high-definition cameras, monitoring 50,000 arrivals in the month of March. Bloomberg reports:
Views from the cameras will be fed into an artificial intelligence platform from Canada's Searidge Technologies Inc. that will interpret the images and reveal to controllers when a particular aircraft has cleared the runway, allowing them to clear the next flight to come in to land... If successful, the system will initially be deployed when Heathrow's 285-foot control tower is shrouded in cloud -- a situation that currently compels the airport to rely on radar readings to determine the position of jets. That in turn requires a bigger gap between flights, costing the hub nine landings an hour or 20 percent of the usual total...
The same technology could also control the airport's $22 billion third runway due to open for flights by 2025, removing the need to construct a new control tower to oversee the strip north and west of the existing one. The smaller London City airport is removing its tower altogether and deploying a mast with zoom cameras, allowing flights to be managed from the Swanwick control center more than 80 miles away.
The same technology could also control the airport's $22 billion third runway due to open for flights by 2025, removing the need to construct a new control tower to oversee the strip north and west of the existing one. The smaller London City airport is removing its tower altogether and deploying a mast with zoom cameras, allowing flights to be managed from the Swanwick control center more than 80 miles away.
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Youre right.
The answer is no, and the full article is bullshit.
Anyone who knows a thing on ATC knows cameras are not involved and are not a good idea to locate planes.
Furthermore, current A.I. has absolutely no accountability and traceability on the decisions and guesses it makes, making it totally unsuitable for safety critical applications.
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Furthermore, current A.I. has absolutely no accountability and traceability on the decisions and guesses it makes
A curious claim. Does your definition of "current AI" exclude the automatic reasoning systems with tracing that we've had for decades by now?
Re:Answer: Yes (Score:3)
Answer: Yes.
If you still have humans in the loop, decisions will be delayed when seconds count, and the biggest mistakes will happen when the controllers are exhausted and confused.
The worst aircraft accident in history was the 1977 Tenerife airport disaster [wikipedia.org] in the Canary Islands. 583 people died in a cascade of errors, miscommunication, and poor judgement calls, as exhausted controllers dealt with heavy fog, delayed flights, and frustrated pilots.
One pilot thought he had clearance to takeoff on a runway t
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I did not get that they are replacing controllers. They are providing additional tools and remote sensing. The system does not provide automated clearances to pilots as far as I understand it.
"Views from the cameras will be fed into an artificial intelligence platform from Canada’s Searidge Technologies Inc. that will interpret the images and reveal to controllers when a particular aircraft has cleared the runway, allowing them to clear the next flight to come in to land."
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"I did not get that they are replacing controllers"
Well, I do so: "The smaller London City airport is removing its tower altogether and deploying a mast with zoom cameras, allowing flights to be managed from the Swanwick control center more than 80 miles away."
They surely will move each and every controller to Swanwick, yeah, sure. And for new deployments, they'll hire just as many controllers as they would do if they were deploying new control towers along new strips, yeah, sure.
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So some consolidation may occur, what of it. The workload is what it is whether at a local tower location or at a remote ACC.
The point is that this is not AI software replacing humans. Good grief, get a grip.
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"One pilot thought he had clearance to takeoff on a runway that another plane was given clearance to cross. Automated cameras would have detected this problem"
On heavy fog? Doubtful.
As you say, main problem was miscommunication and the after-fact was an update on protocol communications (more strict vocabulary an syntax, mainly).
The problem here is not that technology can't help -it certainly can, but that it's not going to be implemented to increase security but to lower costs: you see, cameras will be dep
To a degree (Score:1)
For the day to day and organization of flights I can see AI being able to handle that brilliantly. For more unusual issues I'd imagine controllers will still be needed though; a lot of the issues that are face are oddball ones. A mayday call for instance can involve anything from having an ambulance waiting in the terminal to having a paramilitary response team on the tarmac with fire and EMT's closeby. More mundane but unusual issues such coordinating reports of hazards to other aircraft (think birds, wild
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You sound like you have an actual clue about sort of, well, stuff and things like that. Would you care to drop it in the bin as you depart? It will be redistributed to the users of this site who are in desperate need of one.
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You madam/sir make fare to much sence for /. :) Thank you for taking the time to post even if it was ac
Have a nice day
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A lot of misreading going on. Replacing the tower with remote sensing is not replacing the controller. Instead, the controller moves to an area control centre and deals with screens instead of glass windows.
Really two stories here: automated queue event notification, and remote tower operations.
The AI system is an improvement on existing queue software that is already in use. The system may indicate that a clearance enabling event has occurred but ATC still has to provide the clearance to the aircraft
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Yeah, "AI" is now a meaningless marketing term instead of a meaningless computing term.
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"A lot of misreading going on. Replacing the tower with remote sensing is not replacing the controller. Instead, the controller moves to an area control centre and deals with screens instead of glass windows."
Are you sure about that? The article states that operations will be moved, but it doesn't say a word about the controllers themselves. And even if that's true today, are you sure that once the system is in place it won't be used to increase the ratio of flights-per-controller in the future?
That's neve
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Pretty much sure. Yeah. Read the article.
"won't be used to increase the ratio of flights-per-controller"
The article directly states that this will increase the amount of traffic that can be handled, so yes, I am almost certain individual controller traffic will increase. This is totally in line with providing ATC with all kinds of tools over the past century from analog radar and vhf radios to computerized traffic tracking systems.
The article still is not about replacing controllers with AI software.
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"For the day to day and organization of flights I can see AI being able to handle that brilliantly. For more unusual issues I'd imagine controllers will still be needed though"
Because leaving human intervention *only* for emergencies while automatic systems take care of the 99% of mundane issues, have offered such brilliant results in the past.
You really need AI ? (Score:2)
To tell when a plane has left the runway ?
If the purpose of the tower is to actually see the plane, you can't just put a camera at the end of the runway looking down it and route it to a display ?
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The wrong rate of climb in the wrong way.
Smoke and fire.
A plane might report its abandoning take off due to a mechanical problem.
The crew is unaware of a large fire and a lot of smoke.
Thats extra seconds to call for equipment.
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Yeah I can see that but this is what they are talking about
Views from the cameras will be fed into an artificial intelligence platform from Canada's Searidge Technologies Inc. that will interpret the images and reveal to controllers when a particular aircraft has cleared the runway, allowing them to clear the next flight to come in to land.
So like I said just give the tower cameras hell you want to get fancy put a radar on the runway and ping the plane
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My favorite game for the Osbourne I back in the 1980s was "Air Traffic Controller"- done entirely in text mode.
Anything that was a game in the early 1980s, is easily done with AI now.
robot AI developers (Score:2)
AI and computers/robots are being used to replace higher income jobs to increase profits for companies.
When some idiot programmer develops AI applications to develop AI applications, the AI programmers will be on the scrap heap.
The cut even cost for robots replacing telephone sanitisers means their jobs are safe.
Could work with self taxiing / flying planes (Score:4, Interesting)
Self flying / taxxing aircraft aren't that difficult a problem and they would interact well with automated air traffic control. As long as there are humans though, I think fully automated traffic control would be difficult. Instructions are still given by voice and they can be misunderstood and / or garbled etc.
Automation is also very poor at dealing with unusual situations - say a major earthquake at SFO that might have damaged runways, or a piece of debris falling off of a plane and creating a hazard, or a confused inexperienced (or sometimes experienced) pilot blundering into the wrong airspace. I think some humans will be needed to deal with these sorts of situations.
Absolutely 100% (Score:2)
Can AI-Controlled Cameras Replace An Air Traffic Control Tower?
Absolutely. Sure flying might become Russian roulette but hey, you did replace the ATCs didn't you? ;)
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Uh, not about replacing ATC's. It is about providing better information tools and replacing local towers with remote sensing. It still all feeds to controllers who sit in a quiet control centre environment instead of in a tower. They have screens with camera displays and sensor information instead of windows and binoculars. Hopefully this eliminates blind spots that all local towers suffer from.
Remote ATC and automated air traffic queue systems have been around for decades. I would view this as an
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Uh, not about replacing ATC's.
Are you implying that the title is a lie?
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No, the title asks if AI software and cameras replace a tower. It does not say replace controllers or create AI ATC. The article itself refers to enhancing controller information with AI analysis of remote sensing and replacing a local tower with cameras which feed to a remote ACC.
I think people just assume that removing a physical structure means replacing the people with computers. Nothing actually says that; not stated and not implied.
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Reading instead of blindly commenting? Where's the fun in that? ;)
LHR Third Runway 2025 (Score:2)
No chance in hell Heathrow will open a third runway in 2025. It is unlikely they will even have a ground-breaking by then.
Much like self driving cars (Score:2)
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"Much like self driving cars that need human monitoring, automation at least at this point, can't account for unseen variables and therefor, a human must be monitoring at all times."
Humans can't account for unseen variables either. Maybe you meant unforeseeable? Because a computer can "see" a lot more than a human, and faster too. Multiple cameras, radar, altimeter, engine speeds, fuel pressures, much much faster sense of motion than any human...
Clouds (Score:2)
If successful, the system will initially be deployed when Heathrow's 285-foot control tower is shrouded in cloud
How can camera work around clouds?
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When they're on the ground, below the clouds.
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Towers are usually built to oversee the whole airport, or at least as much of it as possible, from one place. The only way to do that is to be up high. If you're willing to use cameras, and you've got some way to coordinate them (that's why the AI), then you can stick them on the ground, wherever you need. At each end of each runway, probably everywhere a taxiway exits a runway, all around the ramp, etc.
Not about replacing humans .... (Score:2)
Remote ATC has been in operation for at least 50 years. This is just a natural extension of existing operations. For example: the Edmonton FIR (maybe world's largest) uses remote VHF transceivers to provide direct control of Northern locations. The controller is in Edmonton but talks directly to traffic in the Yukon, NW, and Nunavet Territories.
High definition cameras may provide better operational coverage than a local tower. There is a real opportunity to integrate infrared sensing and ground radar
*** NO! *** (Score:2)
Technically yes but No because responsibility (Score:2)
Technically possible but ...
People will always want a person/organization to be held accountable when things go wrong.
Any person who will be held accountable will want to ensure some control over that for which they are accountable.
So there will always be a human in the loop as long as people expect there to be a human to blame when things go wrong.