Airbus' Self-Flying Plane Completes Successful Taxi, Take-Off, and Landing Tests (businessinsider.com) 144
Airbus just completed its Autonomous Taxi, Take-Off, and Landing project that saw one of its jets perform normally pilot-flown maneuvers entirely on its own. Business Insider reports: The European manufacturer just completed flight testing for its Autonomous Taxi, Take-off, and Landing project in June after its flagship aircraft successfully navigated each phase of flight on its own as pilots simply watched. Over 500 flights were conducted with the new Airbus A350-1000 XWB that successfully utilized "image recognition technology" to essentially give the plane a pair of eyes. The technology, integrated with the A350's exterior cameras, allowed it to perform the phases of flight entirely on its own, Airbus announced. The first milestone of the flight testing campaign occurred in December when Airbus was able to successfully demonstrate autonomous take-offs from Toulouse-Blagnac Airport in France. All pilots had to do in the first test was line up the plane with the runway and then sit back and watch as the plane barreled down the runway, lifting off on its own. With Airbus proving that its jet can also land and taxi on its own, the door is now open to fully autonomous flights.
In before the luddites (Score:2, Insightful)
In before the idiots who don't trust machines but use a car, computer, and cell phone.
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It'll be fine when someone isn't actively trying to sabotage or hijack it. Good luck then.
as long as more then one sensor unlike 737 max (Score:2)
as long as more then one sensor unlike 737 max that autopilot failed with.
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Airbus has had MCAS style automation in place since they launched the A320 family in the 1980s - there have been some issues (there always are), but nothing anywhere near like what Boeing has seen with MCAS (and getting in before anyone brings up the Habsheim A320 crash in 1988, that crash was due to an idiot pilot being an idiot, not the aircraft doing anything wrong - if the aircrafts protections were not in place, the aircraft would have cratered the runway rather than coming down in the forest at the en
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The difference being that Airbus brought the automation to its logical conclusion, making a fully digital fly by wire airplane with envelope protection and not a half arsed addon to a 1960s aircraft.
Re:as long as more then one sensor unlike 737 max (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference being that Airbus brought the automation to its logical conclusion, making a fully digital fly by wire airplane with envelope protection and not a half arsed addon to a 1960s aircraft.
It wasn't really the upgrade of a 1960s design that did the 737 in. It was Boeing's new business model of outsourcing based on price, not competence and experience with aviation software development and hardware design. They were offered a deal by an Indian company to basically develop the MCAS system for free. Boeing would then pay them a fixed fee down the line on each aircraft sold. That way the Indians basically took all the risk. This was hailed by Boeing management at the time as the business model of the future. Boeing engineers who protested were told by Boeing management that testing was not necessary because the 737 was a 'mature product'. Nobody considered that since they were taking all that risk, the Indians pinched every penny and cut every corner in the development of the MCAS system, hired $9-an-Hour Engineers, to minimise their exposure to risk and maximise their profit margin. Boeing is not the fist company to ruin a reputation for engineering excellence and first rate safety in the name of profit and they won't be the last. They drew the magic cost-cutting sword from the sacred stone and then chopped both their own feet off.
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IIRC the MCAS was domestic programming, the Indian programmers were for other parts of the system like the entertainment and climate control. The MCAS was a hack job because Boeing has laid off or forcibly retired all the experienced (and well paid) staff to cut salaries in exchange for a bump in the stock price. It's the typical MBA Disease taking down another industry giant.
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Yeah we have heard this fake news before. There is no Indian company involved. If you have some inside info name the company.
Even this supposed "outsourcing" existed the issue is that the plane is aerodynamically a bad design.
You cannot fix in software, bad hardware.
There simply should have been an extra switch to switch off MCAS while keeping electrim trim available. If you dont have that switch physically, no software can enable it.
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Yes, umm how has that worked out with human pilots?
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Human pilots tend to have better situational awareness.
I'm not saying this is a show-stopping problem, only that it bears consideration. It's basically trading the risk of someone becoming a pilot with nefarious intent with an AI that can be convinced to do things a human would not.
Re: In before the luddites (Score:3)
On the other hand, an AI will never decide to commit suicide by murdering 300 people. An AI in theory can have much better physical security than human pilots. An AI can even act as a secured backup to safely resolve a hijacking. If the pilots have a simple dead man switch, that transfers control of the aircraft to the AI that is irrevocable, hijackings can be prevented before they start. Better yet, cockpit emergencies can be mitigated. Sudden depressurisation in the cockpit? No problem - the AI is a
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>On the other hand, an AI will never decide to commit suicide by murdering 300 people.
Correct. They don't waste their time on that few.
There was a documentary on this back in 1984 . . ;
Re:In before the luddites (Score:4, Informative)
Correct. And computers have better attentiveness.
Flying is hard, because you actually need both. For the perfect landing, you need to line up on the runway, and insure that you follow a fairly constant glideslope to the ground while maintaining speed. That requires very close attention. But, you also have to be aware of gusting winds, especially crosswinds, other traffic, conditions on the runway itself, and any crazy thing that might be happening to the plane.
On my last flight, the engine started running rough about 2 miles from the airport. I had to make a radio call to the other traffic (lots of training flight at that airport) to request emergency use of the runway, and then land against the established pattern. The engine quit completely on short final, but I had enough energy to cost to the ramp. Could you program a computer to handle that complex situation?
Alternatively, I suck at maintaining a constant altitude. Always seem to be 50ft high or low. But for years, there have been autopilots that will nail the altitude for hours on end.
The perfect combination is a mix of human and computers piloting.
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That's the proper current mix of abilities. But it's not a constant. Go back a few years and autopilots were less competent. Go forwards a few and they'll be a lot more competent. And perfection does not exist in this universe, so be satisfied with "better".
Once planes started using "fly by wire", the commitment was made. Pilots will increasingly be less and less in control. Whether this is good or bad requires a position from which to judge. But autopilots will increasingly have better access to the
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Re: In before the luddites (Score:3)
The problem there is that every pilot will be massively out of practice. On the other hand, planes with AI pilots, and remote pilots that can take over for any plane using a simulator in real time, along side some cabin crew with extra training to be able to be the eyes and ears of the pilot in the event of hardware failure could work.
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It's going to be much more difficult to hijack airplanes once they no longer have on-board controls. It'd be like trying to hijack one of those self-driving trams at the airport.
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How are they going to hijack something that doesn't have any people? Who are they going to point the gun at?
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Same way you pwn a server.
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>when the coders accept the death penalty for failing to secure the software when it is hacked
It takes both secure hardware and secure software design for a system to be highly resistant to hacking and resilient to component failure.
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No maker of any vehicle, autonomous or not, will claim it'll be 100% accident free. Do you require engineers who built the current mechanical airplanes and cars you use to be subject to your crazy demands? Those are subject to various misuse as we see every day in the case of cars and airplanes every few years. You didn't demand unhijackable airplanes or cars that can't be used by terrorists. Show me a statement by any autonomous vehicle maker that it's unhackable.
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Your disincentive is already covered by threats of lawsuits. See, even if (normal) robo-cars save lives over human drivers, threats of lawsuits for mistakes are delaying things, exposing the lawyer's mantra that "expensive lawsuits save lives by driving safety improvements" as a lie.
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Well, right now the problem is that it's not clear that robot cars *would* save lives. There are situations where they would, and other situations where they are less safe, and nobody knows what all the edge cases are. Automation level 3 (or what it's called when the cars on autopilot, but the driver needs to be ready to take control) is LESS safe than either driver in control or robot in control. One reason is because switching from robot to human requires the human over 10 seconds to get up to speed.
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I don't trust machines that can be hacked remotely.
My car literally doesn't even have computers.
If my computer or phone fails, as they do, they don't threaten my life.
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So like, pre 1990s? Must be from Arizona. I hear that's a great place to drive vintage models.
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It's a 1982 300SD from and in California. Because it's an older diesel it doesn't even require emissions testing.
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I don't trust machines that can be hacked remotely.
My car literally doesn't even have computers.
Yeah, all those daily pileups due to hacked cars are a real problem.
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In before idiots who think tonnes of metal moving at close to the speed of sound, 15,000 feet in the air, are in any way comparable to a phone or a car.
Re:In before the luddites (Score:5, Informative)
The Luddites didn't hate technology or progress, what the Luddites wanted was for people to be considered as machines started to replace more manual work. The mill owners of the 17th/18th Centuries didn't care about their workers, if machines replaced people and machines meant more money, screw the people they could starve for all the mill owners cared. The cottage industries were being obliterated by factory mechanisation.
The Luddites wanted compensation for workers, they wanted pensions and disability payments. When the mill owners wouldn't listen the Luddites smashed the machines to slow the progress down so they have time to convince the mill owners. Sadly many Luddites were hanged for criminal damage simply for fighting for workers rights over machines.
Propaganda was spread that Luddites were anti-machine and anti-progress.
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Sadly many Luddites were hanged for criminal damage simply for fighting for workers rights over machines
Criminal damage was the right verdict. Though hanging them for it was a bit harsh.
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Propaganda was spread that Luddites were anti-machine and anti-progress.
That's not propaganda. That's literally what they did and why they did it. The nuances of *why* also don't come into it when you accuse someone of being a Luddite. For some reason whatever that may be their point seems to be deliberate slowing of progress.
The modern usage of that word is quite consistent.
What does this actually accomplish though? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What does this actually accomplish though? (Score:4, Interesting)
A future with flying cars? Those never happened because most of us would absolutely suck as pilots.
Re:What does this actually accomplish though? (Score:4, Interesting)
Flying taxis are coming, though. And they'll be multicopters...
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So no, flying taxis are not coming. And if they do, they'll be used almost exclusively by the rich to avoid the traffic jams that the rest of us are stuck in. FWIW, I had to rent a helicopter for a photo shoot, and it cost $750/hr. So the 10:1 ratio in that link would seem to hold up, since riding a taxi for an hour will cost you
And, multi-rotors are een worse - they don't scale (Score:3)
A ride in a multi-rotor would cost even more than a helicopter, and it would be extremely cramped.
I like quadcopters. I own a quadcopter. I've built a quadcopter. To do that I needed to understand something about the physics of quadcopters. The physics of them is that they don't scale well at at all.
If you take the design of a hobby quadcopter and make it "ten times bigger", that's 10x high, 10x wide, and 10x long - so 1,000 times as heavy. A thousand times as heavy, but only 100x rotor disk and therefore l
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"So no, flying taxis are not coming. And if they do, they'll be used almost exclusively by the rich to avoid the traffic jams that the rest of us are stuck in."
I didn't say they were coming for us plebes.
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The rich get rich in a free society bringing things to the masses. This includes dropping energy costs, as well as the costs of the vehicles.
It's money laying on the ground. You only have to fear over-regulation melding into command and control, and presto! You won't have it.
Bleeding edge stuff is always expensive. Then costs come down as greety people try to get rich doing so.
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No they never happened because present day flying car technology is loud as hell.
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And the tech hasn't been pursued because of the pilot problem. We're bad enough trying to drive in two dimensions. While there are people who are quite good, they're heavily outnumbered.
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Hover cars. Energy is a problem. That and robo-pilotry is not.
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The Cessna is in the $300k range (2012, according to the article).
Newer ones, yes. But older ones clock in at roughly the price of a luxury consumer car. The cost centers for planes aren't in purchasing the aircraft, it's in storage, maintenance, and fuel costs.
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Every time I see an old B&W newsreel of a "flying car", which turns out to be a small plane cockpit with robust tires, steering, and folding wings, I die a little.
These are not the science fiction flying cars you are looking for.
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Those never happened because most of us would absolutely suck as pilots.
I recall there are several technical and foundational problems with flying cars as well:
There hasn't been a reasonable working prototype yet
The closest to a working prototype has been so expensive that even Bill Gates level rich people balk at it
The best prototypes still need runways to take off
The best prototypes are stupid expensive to operate as well
There are flight schools though where someone with the time and money can pay to be trained as a pilot. Yeah most people with no experience are terrible p
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Actually there have been any number of reasonable working prototypes made. The Moult Taylor Aerocar was built in 1956, probably before most Slashdotters were born. I saw one at an airshow not that long ago. The UAE is experimenting with police hover-bikes today. Either way, made in quantity they wouldn't be much more expensive than a regular automobile. There have been dozens of flying car solutions made over the decades. The simple problem is that they're not practical. Focusing just on the physics, they h
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There was the famous Jetson's-like six rotor spaceshippy-looking thing, that suffered from lack of computer control more than anything.
The time is right.
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self landing could be a useful safety feature in the event of pilot incapacitation.
Autoland is already available (Score:2)
and after 911 we also know that planes can be remotely controlled.
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careful there, you might tear your tinfoil hat.
Re: Autoland is already available (Score:2)
"After 9/11"? Militaries have been converting obsolete aircraft into radio operated drones for decades to test air to air and anti air weapons systems.
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Watch this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Of course, if you make planes smaller to limit the risk, the pilot becomes a much bigger part of the cost.
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Airliners are extremely safe already. Airlines will buy planes based on what makes them the most money, and reducing crashes from probably zero in a year to even more probably zero is not a big money making move.
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No, I meant safe from coronavirus.
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Oh I see. I'm not sure making planes smaller helps there either (certainly not from a money perspective). You want to keep people farther apart.
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This is a multi decade thing. Anyway, what about the costs of ground crew, and all the training, lawsuits, and BS costs? Also, it's possible that autonomous may eliminate human error such that for the over the next few decades pilots can be replaced with cheaper less trained crew and then maybe in 50 years zeroed on some flights. That's how it works at hospitals with health care workers not doctors doing a lot of the work isn't it? It could reduce ticket prices.
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It could reduce ticket prices.
They're so cute when they're naive, aren't they?
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And then the ship places all the passengers in stasis while it waits for its complement of small lemon-soaked paper napkins.
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I think passengers are still going to want human pilots for quite a while.
But cargo planes, where the pilots may be the only people on board, are a different matter. And if you can cut cargo planes from 2 pilots to 1 with this technology, that's still a valuable reduction. Perhaps not in terms of raw salary, but in terms of flexibility and having to cancel a flight because 1 of the pilots suddenly was sick or have a bereavement etc.
Re: What does this actually accomplish though? (Score:2)
It's active all the time and the pilot is there to step in when things go wrong.
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Pilots are expensive, and there is (or at least was) a critical shortage of them.
Your contention that air travel will have a a big, very long term decrease doesn't seem likely. Passenger traffic is already climbing back up.
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Some of them cost almost as much in a year as 12 hours of flight time for a 747.
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Airline margins are slim. They pay a lot of money for small cost savings.
Also, nice job picking a 747. Most airlines don't just fly 747s around. Pilot salaries are 5-10% of major international airlines' costs and more for commuter ones. I think also more for cargo. That's also rising because of the trend towards more flights in smaller planes. You may have noticed your 747s are discontinued?
I think that's raw salary, not including benefits. Also not including training, which is a huge expense.
Re: What does this actually accomplish though? (Score:2)
Sometimes, due to scheduling and union rules, you could even end up paying 2 or 3 pilots to fly 1 trip when only one of them is actually on the plane. Or, due to a coverage shortage, paying the pilot who is flying the trip double.
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Re: What does this actually accomplish though? (Score:2)
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Also robo passenger jets have been a thing for 20 years. I thought all had them, and there hasn't ever been a need uet to acvate the Emergency Pilot Hologram.
"Please state the nature of the aircraft emerg...oh, I see we're crashing. Oh, for a boring life..."
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Insurance.
A computer can land an aircraft better and more reliably than an human under "normal" circumstances.
Maintenance.
Hard landings and incorrect power settings are hell on the mechanicals. A computer that optimizes operations makes the system more reliable.
Needs to be tested in failure situations (Score:5, Insightful)
Pilots are trained around the edges of the envelope, and in failure situations. Until the automation can do that as well as a person, it can only be an aid, like an ordinary autopilot.
Including.. (Score:2)
Re: Including.. (Score:2)
Most likely the same way rockets do. With redundant computer systems. Iâ(TM)m not sure I know of a rocket failure that was caused by the computer itself failing (as opposed to the software being inadequate).
Figuring out when the software us adequate... now thereâ(TM)s the trick.
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Pilots are trained around the edges of the envelope, and in failure situations. Until the automation can do that as well as a person, it can only be an aid, like an ordinary autopilot.
It's all a question of statistics. There's never going to be a zero chance of a plane falling out of the sky. If you get to a point where the chances are really small then you have a viable system. Sure, you might get edge cases where you could say a pilot might have done better, but if it's a sufficiently unlikely event it doesn't really make a difference to the overall picture.
And it's not like pilots never make errors...
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I'm so tired of the stupid fucking argument that the guys doing X are trained super awesome and are nothing unlike the rest of us where 80% of us are "meh" quality, 10% are fucking terrible, and 10% are exceptional.
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Who collected the data for that statistic? I'm not sure of the general case, but in a couple of cases that made the news the pilot was blamed for machine errors. (Look up early reports of the Boeing 737 failures.)
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Until the automation can do that as well as a person
Ironically you have that precisely backwards. Both in the design of air controls and the design of any control scheme the pilot or operator is generally recognised as the least effective and most fallible component. The entire principle of safety systems is that the operator or pilot does something wrong and to assume control automatically to make something safe.
Automation can already do that better, it's just expensive to design for every edge case when you could simply throw a pilot in the seat and then b
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Even back in the 1960s auto-landing was used in conditions where a human pilot couldn't safely do one, such as extremely low visibility. It was considered a selling point of some passenger jets that they could auto-land in thick fog where others could not.
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What the MCAS episode has shown us is that humans who have been flying for 1000s of hours with no incidents dont handle an emergency well. Especially if the system behaves differently from the systems they trained on. An AI would not be lulled into a false sense of security.
New challenger to Sugar Free Gummi Bears (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine settling in to your seat on that A350, and just as it starts down the run way, you find out there's no one, but software, up front flying the thing.
Need help loosening up your bomb doors? These Amazon reviews [amazon.com] had me in tears when I read them last week.
Old airplane automation joke (Score:2)
The dignitaries board Air France Flight 001, billed as the first totally automated airline flight.
The doors are closed and a calm voice sounds on the cabin speakers, "Welcome ladies and gentlemen to Air France Flight, the world's first completely automatically pilot flight from New York to Paris. The automated systems are the culmination of decades of advanced research by the finest minds in the aviation industry, with input from veteran pilots that this flight is the most relaxing travel experience eve
good and bad (Score:2)
While this is good in the sense of standardization, there is going to be a huge drop in the competency of pilots as a result. Both from the corporate push to use anything with a heartbeat, and the loss of hours from staff reduction.
So the scenario where a meat sack overrides and saves the day will not happen because all of the trained pilots are literate monkeys pressing buttons.
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While this is good in the sense of standardization, there is going to be a huge drop in the competency of pilots as a result. Both from the corporate push to use anything with a heartbeat, and the loss of hours from staff reduction.
So the scenario where a meat sack overrides and saves the day will not happen because all of the trained pilots are literate monkeys pressing buttons.
there are airlines that I don't fly with due to the lack of legitimate qualifications for pilots https://www.news.com.au/travel... [news.com.au] and https://www.hindustantimes.com... [hindustantimes.com] these airlines would do well with these new planes.
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the corporate push to use anything with a heartbeat
I thought the whole point here was to get rid of the things with heartbeats?
fully autonomous flights (Score:2)
And you believe that?
Same as the Tesla full self driving.
Buggy as whatever app you download.
They forgot the human factor (Score:2)
While its now possible to have a plane fly itself entirely , just how will they persuade anyone to travel in one? Most people are nervous flyers at the best of times and with no pilot they'll probably simply not bother. The airlines will still have to put someone up front to reassure passengers so he might as well fly the thing too.
And yes, I know automated trains exist but they're all slow speed metro trains and if they go wrong there is an emergency stop system after which the passengers can get out and w
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While its now possible to have a plane fly itself entirely , just how will they persuade anyone to travel in one?
With cheaper tickets. People who are afraid without a pilot will buy more expensive tickets and get a pilot.
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Given that you can already get a short haul ticket for the price of a large mcdonalds meal that approach won't work. Plus even if you paid people to fly I doubt many would go on a plane with no pilot.
Ok, how would this compare with Sully? (Score:2)
Despite pilot errors causing crashes, it's not likely to get rid of them any time soon.
Consider the landing to the Hudson, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Plane hits a flock of geese on takeoff, both engines down.
Sully did look through possible landing options. The computer would have probably agreed about checking the possibility of returning to LaGuardia or diverting to Teterboro.
For Sully, it became apparent that neither are reachable, after he made the decision to ditch in Hudson.
How would computer aut
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AA1549
Meant US1549 of course.
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Let's consider pilot issues since AA1549 in response. I will start off with one pilot suicide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You are now only nine lives up. Then we have what most people consider to be some sort of mallicaious action of a pilot in MH370
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Right I am now 230 lives up, looks like fully automatic aircraft for the win to me. These are just the first two I could think of that would get me well past the 155 lives Sully saved.
Mind you I would expect a fully automatic
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Sully was actually supported by fhe highly automated airplane, allowing him to pull back the side stick all the way without worryimg that he might stall.
The writing is in the wall for pilots (Score:2)
Huge difference over Boeing (Score:4, Interesting)
When Boeing was ran by ENgineers, they constantly worked on improving operations, doing R&D on flight systems, etc. One thing that Airbus did was to move to fly-by-wire. For the first 10-15 years, there were a number of airbus accidents that were blamed on pilots, but realistically should have been attributed to pilot AND computer. The difference is that Airbus continued to push through this. They now have commercial equipment with fairly solid computers and can do true AP. Note that even before, both Boeing and Airbus had their AP take-off and land aircraft's. However, that was at airports that were specially equipped AND it was only under best of condition. This was NOT full AP. Airbus, similar to Tesla, has added Cameras and I suspect AIs to be able to handle take-off/landings in various conditions, including cross-winds.
So, what does this mean for Airbus and aviation as a whole? Boeing was the first aircraft maker to move to 3 ppl (dropping navigator), and later, just 2 ppl to fly the aircraft. Since ~2000, Boeing really has not had an innovations on the Commercial flights. Airbus now has 2 interesting capabilities. The first is to be able to take over the controls of an aircraft remotely. This will stop hijackings, but will also allow for a major change. Basically, it allows for single pilots to fly these aircraft's. Within 10 years, Airlines will INSIST on Airbus making aircraft with single pilots, esp. for domestic routes under say 4 hours. Very likely, 1-3 flight attendants will be upgraded to some sort of emergency flight capabilities. IOW, if the pilot has a heart attack, they can fly it.
Why will this happen? A flight deck crew, i.e. the pilots, is about 2-3% of the costs of a large commercial aircraft. Just by dropping 1 pilot, the airlines can save 1%. That does not sound like much, but when fuel went up in the 80s, airlines went ballistic. Things like removing ash trays that were no longer being used was done to save money. The ashtrays were actually on current and NEW aircraft for almost 10 years after no smoking went into effect. My father came up with several flight changes that saved American and later the industry millions. For that, he was given a nice award, handshake from Bob Crandall and something like $200 (IOW, about $1000 today for saving AA millions each year; amazing, though it was better than other airlines who did NOTHING).
Make no mistake. Domestics will finally move to single pilots and it will be Airbus that accomplished this, not Boeing. This is as large a change as Tesla is forcing the industry to EVs and AP.
Congrats to Airbus.