As was pointed out earlier, I think the issue is more social then technical.
We have UAVs that are towed to a takeoff point, a computer program lauches
and later lands the vehicle and a pilot sees what the plane sees via
satilite. The flight is carried out, 99% by the program put into the UAV
before departure and the "pilot" takes over only if they see something on
the ground that makes them want to take a closer look.

The military has already started to launch hellfire missiles from UAVs
flying in Afganistan on orders from someone looking at a TV in Washington.

Before 9/11 I got to sit in the cockpit of a Dash8 from TO to YOW. In
response to changes from the tower, the pilot just entered the change into
the autopilot and it did the rest. The pilot did not take the controls until
he was about 500 AGL on approach. If the controller could just click on the
aircraft on his screen, type in the new heading or alt. and the computer
would do it that might simplify everyone's job with fewer communications
errors. You might still get a few people killed getting the bugs out of the
system, like when they sent the lander to Mars with one subroutine working
with KM/min and the other subroutine working in miles/hour.

Mind you at that point the highjacker just has to capture a control tower
and send a bunch of aircraft into the same location and doesn't get to be
with a single virgin, let alone 70.

So we should be clear on what constitutes autonomous, what parts would the
plane control and where would the pilot be who can override the computer.

The problem is that society will not accept a pilotless plane because of the
what if factor. What if the computer failed, who will reboot it, what if the
weather goes bad, etc. And the old quetion seen in all airplane disaster
movies, "who is flying the plane"?


"Greg Farris" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...


Recently, Greg Farris posted:



One point of the DARPA challenge (cited earlier in this thread) is to
create autonomous vehicles capable of simply getting from point A to B in
a dynamic environment. The results speak for themselves.


They do - and what they tell us is that navigating over uncharted terrain,
full of obstacles, is a challenge for land vehicles. Quite a different
challenge from taxiing across a few hundred feet of perfectly charted,
smooth pavement, custom designed to fit the particularities of your
vehicle!

If we really wanted pilotless airliners (and my argument is that we do
not,
and will not, probably ever) it will be a simple matter to eliminate the
human-controlled taxiing phase. Simply towing the aircraft would be one
way
to do it. Besides, ground operations are one of the most error-prone
phases
of aircraft operations, usually because pilots misunderstand
instructions. So this would be a good candidate for automation, even
without getting rid of the pilots.

G Faris