By 2030, commercial passengers will routinely fly in pilotlessplanes.

With seniority and overtime, you'd be surprised at what city bus drivers
make. They drive Hummers and Lexus' - I drive a Ford Taurus.

Once the airlines get pilots' salaries down to bus driver levels, the

Given the recent crash near Athens, Greece, and the Payne Stewart LearJet
incident... I'd say we have a long ways to go.


"Bob Fry" wrote in message
...
Not my statement. See
http://www.longbets.org/4

What sayeth the group wisdom? I think eventually there will be
pilotless aircraft, the question is when.

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote:

This reminds me of a movie I watched some time ago. Can't remember
which one, could have been 'Right Stuff'. The aircraft was designed to
fly without pilots, but for some reason they elected to have pilots in
the aircraft. But there were no windows for the pilots. So, the pilots
vehemently objected to it, and wanted to hand fly the aircraft. Then I
think there was some discussion of putting a monkey in the aircraft
instead of pilots. Any way, in the end the pilots won, and they had to
redesign everything with windows and controls.

The movie title is correct, however the cited example referred not to an
aircraft but to the first manned American spacecraft, the Mercury capsule.


Greetings,
Markus

Recently, Peter Duniho posted:

"Bob Noel" wrote in message
...
What we don't have is the ability to formally prove the correctness
of software.

We DO have the ability to prove "correct enough". That is, we have
engineering strategies designed to ensure correctness to some given
degree. These are the same techniques that were used for the space
shuttle computers (though, unfortunately, not for recent unmanned
space probes), and similar techniques are used for existing
automation in aviation.

It's true that we don't have mathematical proofs for correctness. Of
course, it's widely believed we may never be able to have that. But
physical engineering suffers from similar limitations, and it seems
to get by just fine. Theoretical design can always be undermined by
human implementation, but there is an idea of "good enough" in both
types of engineering. You simply design in assumptions of human
failure of implementation.

I don't see this as a fundamental barrier to pilotless airliners.

In the same vein, piloted airliners are "good enough". The number of
catastrophic losses are quite small in comparison to the number of
flights. There is no evidence that aircraft piloted by computer would fare
any better, much less signficantly better.

As I see it, the question isn't whether a computer can fly an airplane
from A to B, but whether it can handle the unanticipated problem
successfully. This amounts to being able to anticipate the opportunities
to fail, and the possibilities extend well beyond the ability to predict
them (the DARPA land XC example demonstrates that this may be an issue).
While computer-piloted aircraft may eventually be able to succeed "most of
the time", human-piloted aircraft have done so for quite some time. So, I
question the benefits of such an effort.

Neil

As far as high jacking: I think that a pilotless plane would be more
secure. The designers could put in a code or something and make it
impossible for a hi-jacker to take control of the plane.

Of course he could still blow the damn thing up in mid-flight, but he
wouldn't be able to fly it into the WTC or such.

wrote:

As far as high jacking: I think that a pilotless plane would be more
secure. The designers could put in a code or something and make it
impossible for a hi-jacker to take control of the plane.

Given the demonstrated abilities of hackers, I think it might make hijacking easier.

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.

George Patterson wrote:

wrote:

As far as high jacking: I think that a pilotless plane would be more
secure. The designers could put in a code or something and make it
impossible for a hi-jacker to take control of the plane.


Given the demonstrated abilities of hackers, I think it might make
hijacking easier.


Quote

Then instead of having 3 or 4 hijackers taking 1 aircraft, we will have
1 Hacker taking over several aircrafts and flying them wherever he wants

"Neil Gould" wrote in message
...
In the same vein, piloted airliners are "good enough". The number of
catastrophic losses are quite small in comparison to the number of
flights. There is no evidence that aircraft piloted by computer would fare
any better, much less signficantly better.

What would you consider "evidence"? It's not like we've got airliners
without pilots that we can use for comparison. There's no question
automation would avoid certain kinds of losses; the valid question (without
an answer for the moment) is whether human pilots balance that out with
actions that a computerized pilot could not take.

I am sure the pilots' unions will invest great resources in showing that
human pilots are better. But I'd just as soon see an independent source for
that analysis.

Saying "there is no evidence" may be true, but it doesn't answer the
question. It simply describes the current lack of information.

As far as "good enough" goes, that's a social issue. For the time being,
I'd agree things are "good enough", especially the distrust that the public
would have with an fully automated airliner. But long-term, airlines are
looking at two things, at least:

* Overall loss rate
* Cost of operations

Both of these affect their bottom line, and if they can save money by using
airliners without human pilots, they will. They will, of course, have to
take into account the effect making that change will have on ridership. But
if the airliners can convince the public that taking the human out of the
equation is safer, that won't be an issue.

Pete

Recently, Peter Duniho posted:

"Neil Gould" wrote:
In the same vein, piloted airliners are "good enough". The number of
catastrophic losses are quite small in comparison to the number of
flights. There is no evidence that aircraft piloted by computer
would fare any better, much less signficantly better.

What would you consider "evidence"?

I meant "evidence" in a loose way, not as legally valid terminology. ;-)
So, any vehicle capable of operating autonomously over long distances and
time could provide some "evidence", one way or the other.

There's no question automation would avoid certain kinds of losses;
the valid question (without an answer for the moment) is whether
human pilots balance that out with actions that a computerized pilot
could not take.

I am sure the pilots' unions will invest great resources in showing
that human pilots are better. But I'd just as soon see an
independent source for that analysis.

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.

As far as "good enough" goes, that's a social issue. For the time
being, I'd agree things are "good enough", especially the distrust
that the public would have with an fully automated airliner.

I also don't see this as an issue of public trust, because the mindset
that we have about such things today is not relevant. By the time AI has
achieved the required sophistication to pull this off, I'd expect that
autonomous machines would be quite the norm and everyone would be able to
accept the introduction of autonomous airlines as the next logical step,
pun intended. ;-)

But
long-term, airlines are looking at two things, at least:

* Overall loss rate
* Cost of operations

I am skeptical that the overall loss rate would change much, for the
reasons I stated in my last post.

As for cost of operations, it seems to me that support for autonomous
aircraft would require an even larger and more costly infrastructure than
the airlines have now. Who is going to service and pre-flight these
systems? Considering the number of service stations capable of dealing
with the problems identified by the computers in our cars and the expense
of repair, I don't think the airlines can expect to save much (if
anything) by eliminating pilots.

Regards,

Neil

In article ,
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".

The question of pilotless aircraft is not a technical question. The
technical part is trivial. The question is when, and especially WHY would
we want to do such a thing? The revenue value of an airline flight makes
the cost of at least one pilot very small. Passengers will not want to fly
in an aircraft that does not have the ability to be taken over "in
extremis" by a human pilot, and insurance companies will never go for a
scenario where there is no hopeless sucker (especially a dead one) to take
the blame when something goes wrong.

G Faris