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TheLuteceSibling t1_j1al62z wrote

Some of them land themselves, but only in nice conditions. The new and fancy ones land themselves in mediocre or poor conditions.

Wanna bet your life on Tesla Autopilot: Sky Edition?

Edit: oh, and the drones and things you listed still have pilots. They're just not in the vehicle. Auto-landing tech in aircraft is very rare.

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Any-Growth8158 t1_j1b2844 wrote

I can't imagine that people who actually work with software would trust these things. Without the ability to over-ride it, you'd never catch me in even an autonomous car even as a demonstration.

Everything is bug free and/or with sufficient redundancies until something no one expected to occur does and things go to hell.

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noonemustknowmysecre t1_j1b9tux wrote

> I can't imagine that people who actually work with software would trust these things.

There's a whole different genre of software when it comes to life-critical or mission-critical software. The sort where a bug could kill people or cost millions of dollars. Real engineering. Used to work on OBOGS which let fighter pilots breath. If you have a bug and the thing stops generating oxygen, the pilot has about 30 seconds to notice and pull an emergency lever to switch to the emergency tank. DO-178 would be the super-fun process to make this sort of software. And yes, you have to start worrying about stray cosmic rays flipping random bits in your memory. Lots of CRC checks and watchdogs and heartbeats. The time to reboot a system is important if the pilot can't breath in the meantime.

But if you ever.... drive a car on cruise control, ride an elevator, get an X-ray, then you've trusted your life to some lines of code.

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BrendanTFirefly t1_j1am8hq wrote

This makes me wonder if remotely piloted passenger aircraft is something that is currently in the works.

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rhomboidus t1_j1amszu wrote

Almost certainly not for liability reasons if nothing else.

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manofredgables t1_j1axmdt wrote

It's kind of funny though. Programming an autopilot for an airplane isn't even a very complicated thing to do. I'm pretty sure that I could make a pretty good one all by myself if I had a few months.

Making one that can be guaranteed to not cause any deaths though? Not touching that with a ten foot pole!

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Moskau50 t1_j1aoc70 wrote

Too risky, because you have the entire plane's functionality hinging on a single point of failure: the network connection.

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ZizouGOAT10 t1_j1aorgy wrote

Could they implement an autopilot that can take over in that scenario and keep the plane running until the pilots come back

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Moskau50 t1_j1aywvp wrote

The pilots are the backup for the autopilot, not the other way around. If the autopilot were to be good enough to replace the pilots during the outage, there would be no need for pilots.

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ZizouGOAT10 t1_j1az4tn wrote

Oh I’m assuming the remote pilots are the main source and the autopilot would be to keep the plane afloat until the pilots come back but not good enough to fully take over or anything

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Moskau50 t1_j1b3awp wrote

Which means that it’s not actually a backup, because if there’s some sort of electrical short that causes the connection to fail, that plane will crash.

Autopilot systems are routinely used today, so that pilots don’t have to have hands on the control for the entire flight. In any situation, or during takeoff/landing, the pilots take over for the autopilot. Outsourcing the pilots to a remote connection means that you’re outsourcing the backup, not the primary.

So you’re either swapping the autopilot to the role of backup (which is already a no-go in the current aircraft setup, so there’s no reason to assume they’d suddenly be okay with it) or you’re relying on the remote pilots to be as reliable as a pilot physically in the plane, which is foolish.

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WeDriftEternal t1_j1an1ko wrote

ITs not new. Remotely piloted aircraft aren't a new concept, its just way improved recently with technology and affordability. Taking the pilot out of any craft has long been discussed. Commercial Airlines would LOVE to have pilots not have to be physically in the airplane, it would make ops much much more effective and cheaper-- until something goes wrong, and it will.

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TehWildMan_ t1_j1an3rr wrote

In some countries, airlines and regulators are proposing the idea of single-pilot operation, at least in a normal cruise phase of flight. Even that is a regulatory hassle many aren't comfortable with

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noonemustknowmysecre t1_j1b7vpo wrote

> Some of them land themselves, but only in nice conditions. The new and fancy ones land themselves in mediocre or poor conditions.

Uh, you have that exactly backwards. The worse the conditions, the more that autoland is advised by the FAA

> Auto-landing tech in aircraft is very rare.

Wut? All airliners have it.

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