<story><title>FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics</title><url>https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/money/industries/logistics/2020/08/28/fedex-plane-autonomous-flight-reliable-robotics/5655258002/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alfalfasprout</author><text>Frankly the tech for autonomous aviation has been around for a while now. I expect even strong crosswind landings will soon be better handled by a computer than a pilot. But then here’s the problem...&lt;p&gt;Autonomous systems are great when things are going well, but at the end of the day they fare very poorly in edge cases sometimes with catastrophic results. When you’re driving a car you usually follow traffic rules and stop lights to get to your destination safely. In an airplane there’s constant communication and things change frequently based on weather, traffic, emergencies, etc. I can’t count the number of times ATC has repeated back an incorrect call sign. As a human we know it was probably meant for us and call back to confirm. Would a computer do that? Even if we used datalink communications then ATC would now have a much higher burden. Also human pilots would lose the situational awareness of hearing instructions for other aircraft on frequency.&lt;p&gt;Then there’s the question of— in an emergency situation is the computer going to be able to make the right judgement calls? What if its sensors are iced over&amp;#x2F;inop?&lt;p&gt;All in all, while technologically I feel this could have been pulled off yesterday, I doubt we will see fully autonomous aircraft operating long routes in controlled airspace anytime soon.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sargun</author><text>So, NASA, is in the process of working on some of this. They’re trying to come up with a new ATC model which will work better for drones &amp;#x2F; eVTOL air taxis &amp;#x2F; etc.&lt;p&gt;Some of the ideas are around “carving” out corridors, where you would be able to fly, and this corridor could be reasonably large (across multiple towers today). The other interesting thing is hierarchical ATC automation.&lt;p&gt;So, normal ATC would still exist, but they would interact with a tier of controllers who are responsible for them interacting with UAVs.&lt;p&gt;A lot of this apparently came from the idea that eVTOL is the future, and we will all be commuting to work in an electric airplane.&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nasa.gov&amp;#x2F;simlabs&amp;#x2F;atc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nasa.gov&amp;#x2F;simlabs&amp;#x2F;atc&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>FedEx feeder plane takes flight without pilot in test for Reliable Robotics</title><url>https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/money/industries/logistics/2020/08/28/fedex-plane-autonomous-flight-reliable-robotics/5655258002/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alfalfasprout</author><text>Frankly the tech for autonomous aviation has been around for a while now. I expect even strong crosswind landings will soon be better handled by a computer than a pilot. But then here’s the problem...&lt;p&gt;Autonomous systems are great when things are going well, but at the end of the day they fare very poorly in edge cases sometimes with catastrophic results. When you’re driving a car you usually follow traffic rules and stop lights to get to your destination safely. In an airplane there’s constant communication and things change frequently based on weather, traffic, emergencies, etc. I can’t count the number of times ATC has repeated back an incorrect call sign. As a human we know it was probably meant for us and call back to confirm. Would a computer do that? Even if we used datalink communications then ATC would now have a much higher burden. Also human pilots would lose the situational awareness of hearing instructions for other aircraft on frequency.&lt;p&gt;Then there’s the question of— in an emergency situation is the computer going to be able to make the right judgement calls? What if its sensors are iced over&amp;#x2F;inop?&lt;p&gt;All in all, while technologically I feel this could have been pulled off yesterday, I doubt we will see fully autonomous aircraft operating long routes in controlled airspace anytime soon.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>liability</author><text>Along these lines, would an autopilot ever think of landing in the Hudson?  (Particularly if it hadn&amp;#x27;t been done before?)</text></comment>