By 2030, commercial passengers will routinely fly in pilotlessplanes.

Recently, Greg Farris posted:

says...


I see it a little differently. The contest is not between humans and
computer control a computer can fly an airplane autonomously from
point A to B. That's a ways off, considering the current state of AI.


What AI?? The scenario you've just described is thousands of times
simpler than what happens every time you turn on your computer to
check the aviation ng. Taxiing is the only element in this scenario
that is not already fully automated, and performed better by machines
than by people. We only fly today to keep ourselves in practice, in
case we "really" have to fly "someday".

I suspect that you are confusing "autonomous" with "automatic". There is
no question but that machinery can follow programmed instructions
precisely (that is at the heart of CNC), however that machinery is not
making decisions in a greatly dynamic environment. In your example, the
location of airports are fixed, and it is a relatively simple task to have
a set of instructions that would get an aircraft from one to the other;
OTOH, taxiing is a dynamic environment, requiring informational
interaction and control based on mutually agreed decisions -- i.e.
autonomy. AFAIK, today's systems are incapable of that. Weather is also a
dynamic environment, one which every aircraft must contend with on every
flight; course deviations based on developing weather also require
autonomy. How do current-day automatic systems handle that? AFAIK, they
can't.

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.

Regards,

Neil