|
Shao821 posted:Air travel (and to the same extent airframe manufacturing) is all about trust and risk reduction. Sure they have these systems. But just like self-driving cars, there will be someone behind the wheel. That is, until people become comfortable with the automated systems and the perceived risk of using them becomes negligible. At first, they'll start by retraining the pilots to allow the planes to take the wheel for certain phases of flight, just like they do now, but with more emphasis on taxi, takeoff, and landing. Then pilots will become glorified babysitters for the fully automated planes. After 20-30 years of advertising this to their customers (because everything in aviation is slow, they still don't have wireless DAL C systems yet, much less B or A), airlines may start introducing fully automated flights to see how the passengers take it. If people accept it, great. If not, then they just put in some guy with 10 hours of flight training and pay him 15 bucks an hour. Either way, the well trained, well paid pilots are doomed long term. 15 bucks p/h and 10 hour sof flight training doesn't cover the 1% of situations where a human pilot is needed over an automated pilot. Automated flying uses huge amounts of data from successful human flights to behave in the optimal fashion in a variety of conditions, including particularly challenging ones. The problem is is that the flights where things go wrong are, necessarily, statistical outliers with uniquely challenging conditions. This type of story comes to mind: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/commercial-airplane-crashes-hudson-river-article-1.361188 Until we invent functionally true AI, one that is able to think in a lateral fashion and not within a set of predetermined parameters (which could restrict it in unforeseen circumstances), this is something only a human is really capable of. There is an actually an ongoing debate within the profession of flying about the approaches of the two main commercial airline manufacturers. Airbus takes the approach that the flight control system has ultimate authority, and will limit of the input of the pilot by restricting their ability to control the plane within a certain envelope. Boeing on the other hand 'trusts' the pilots a lot more, allowing them to perform more extreme manoeuvres (which can be either good or bad depending on the skill of the pilot). Both sides have advantages and disadvantages, Boeing's trust in pilots has allowed them to arrest catastrophes and airbus's restrictions have arguably prevented them. Another thing to bear in mind is redundancy. Having two pilots is not necessary to fly the plane, one would do, but having two dramatically reduces the likelihood of both being incapacitated simultaneously (they even eat separate food to prevent food poisoning). Human pilots can also use analog interfaces and instruments to fly the plane if the digital and electrical ones fail. Basically, what I'm trying to say is is that human pilots and most of the safety measures on a modern aircraft are not required 99% of the time on a commercial aircraft, but they are there to give up to 600 people a much better shot at surviving if things do wrong in an unpredictable way. Flying will be automated one day (cargo before passenger), but we are long way off that capability right now.
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2016 14:36
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 07:18 |
|
|
Tei posted:I totally agree. When we get to artificial general intelligence (a kind of medium between current weak AI and strong AI), piloting as a profession is out the window, alongside a poo poo tonne of other jobs that are otherwise 'safe' in current projections.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2016 17:41
|
|
|
RE computational control of aircraft, specifically commercial airliners, there is actually quite a debate in the flying community that has gone on for a long time, and is pretty pertinent to aviation. The two major manufacturers, Airbus and Boeing, take different approaches to how they design the systems with which a pilot controls the aircraft. Airbus pilots fly via a joystick, and all of their inputs are sent to a (triple redundancy) system that ensures these actions stay within a flight envelope. There is a decision engine that is context sensitive, and prevents the pilots from making certain manoeuvres depending on the conditions (the system will permit greater freedom of action in what it perceives to be an emergency). In this sense, the design of an airbus aircraft trusts the systems over the pilot. Boeing aircraft on the other hand, whilst still having programmed flight envelopes that constrain the pilot, are far more permissive, significantly more like a mechanical system. It places more trust in the pilot. Both systems have encountered criticism and both have been implicated in causing a crash, or being unable to sufficiently prevent it. Cases against more 'automation' of flight systems quote:One objection raised against flight envelope protection is the incident that happened to China Airlines Flight 006, a Boeing 747SP-09, northwest of San Francisco in 1985.[5] In this flight incident, the crew was forced to overstress (and structurally damage) the horizontal tail surfaces in order to recover from a roll and near-vertical dive. (This had been caused by an automatic disconnect of the autopilot and incorrect handling of a yaw brought about by an engine flame-out). The pilot recovered control with about 10,000 ft of altitude remaining (from its original high-altitude cruise). But to do that the pilot had to pull the aircraft with an estimated 5.5 G, or more than twice its design limits.[5] If the aircraft had a flight envelope protection system, this recovery could not have been performed. quote:Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330, entered an aerodynamic stall from which it did not recover and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing all aboard. Temporary inconsistency between measured speeds, likely a result of the obstruction of the pitot tubes by ice crystals, caused autopilot disconnection and reconfiguration to alternate law In both these cases, the flight envelope protection system prevented the pilots from pulling up sharply (because in normal flying conditions this would cause a stall). The 'intelligent' systems failed in this respect. Cases for more 'automation' of flight systems quote:US Airways Flight 1549, an Airbus A320, experienced a dual engine failure after a bird strike and subsequently landed safely in the Hudson River. The NTSB accident report[11] mentions the effect of flight envelope protection: "The airplane’s airspeed in the last 150 feet of the descent was low enough to activate the alpha-protection mode of the airplane’s fly-by-wire envelope protection features... Because of these features, the airplane could not reach the maximum AOA attainable in pitch normal law for the airplane weight and configuration; however, the airplane did provide maximum performance for the weight and configuration at that time... The flight envelope protections allowed the captain to pull full aft on the sidestick without the risk of stalling the airplane." quote:American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300, crashed when the vertical stabiliser broke off due to large rudder inputs by the pilot. A flight-envelope protection system could have prevented this crash. This is relevant to the discussion because an AI pilot is likely to be a significant extension of current flight envelope systems, narrowing down the range of inputs and actions in a context sensitive way, until it is the one ultimately making the decisions. The jury is very much out, atleast in the aviation community, on the efficacy of autopilots and automated systems being able to handle unexpected events, but it is a discussion that has been going on for a fair while.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2017 15:12
|
|
|
Owlofcreamcheese posted:The thing is: the machine and the person both messed up. In version 8.2.123 of the machine next year they can fix the machine and never have it happen again, if the pilot messes up they can maybe mention the issue in a text book and hope that in 10 years some random pilot happens to be in that situation that can recall a one in a million thing he read once in a text book one time but probably he won't. Actually flying is one of those cases where learning is very iterative and lessons are distributed across the world. Black boxes are meticulously studied and catalogued, with these lessons applied frequently to pilots who, with most major airlines, go in for simulator every few months. e: that's not to say that the same can't be said of a machine, being updated via wireless or whatever (although that introduces other problems that anybody who is familiar with software programming might be aware of).
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2017 15:53
|
|
|
Paradoxish posted:Aren't these both cases of the autopilot just specifically encountering situations that it wasn't designed for and wasn't equipped to handle? I'm not at all familiar with China Airlines Flight 006 so I'm only basing this on a cursory googling, but everything I can find seems to indicate that the autopilot just wasn't built to handle this kind of failure. From the wikipedia article on it: The criticism directed at China flight 006 is that a restrictive flight envelope system would've prevented recovery, ie a machine trusted system over a pilot one. The flight control schema would've designated his sharp pull-up as a dangerous manoeuvre . That said, many have argued that the plane wouldn't have got into that situation were such a system in place. Like I said, it's an ongoing debate.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2017 16:34
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 07:18 |
|
|
Mr Chips posted:It's not even that much of a difference, despite the Boeing marketing. Both will automatically throttle back in over-speed, both will take action to correct a stall. The Airbus system will limit Gs, the Boeing one won't. Airbus pilots can still flick a couple of switches to turn off the flight envelope protections, their Boeing flying counterparts have to fight the stick to do it. I mean a lot of this was explained to me in training and by assorted veterans. The flight envelope characteristics are significantly different the two. The 787 and the a350 xwb (ie the latest gen composite fuselage aircraft) are also far more capable of handling sustained g-forces, so I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that the heavier and less flexible SP, which might as well be made of pig iron, is more resilient. the SP certainly isn't able to perform feats like this.   a neurotic ai fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Aug 16, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Aug 16, 2017 17:56
|
|