Pilotless Airplanes?

[WrightAvia]

I just hope a pilot won't just be a moderator in the future

Here is something from NASA's space plane project website...

"The Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology, or DART, is a flight demonstrator vehicle designed to test technologies including an advanced video guidance sensor required for U.S. space vehicles to locate and autonomously rendezvous with other spacecraft. The DART mission is unique in that all operations will be autonomous -- there will be no astronaut on board at the controls, only computers performing automated functions. Launched on a Pegasus rocket, DART will test rendezvous, close proximity operations and its control between the vehicle and a stationary satellite in orbit. The DART mission provides a key step in establishing autonomous rendezvous capability for the United States."

It's just a matter of time. There won't be pilotless planes, but single pilot planes are going to come. Not next year...but it's coming. Anyone that doesn't think it can happen, probably watches Beta format video on an American made VCR.

Do a search on www.google.com under the phrase "autonomous flight". You'll get 202,000 hits. No disrespect to UAV chaser...but I don't think he can list 202,000 things about UAVs.

 

[CLCAP]

Why not? It'll take a while (I'll be dead by then i hope) but the technology is here already! Imagine an airline with fully automated airplanes having a couple of "controllers" on duty 24h/day that can "jump" into any airplane and take over from the ground. The only thing that would be required would be one (or several) sat link('s) with the airplane and if it lost it - it wuld just go and land at the nearest airport.

Now I agree that the idea will be hard to sell to the flying public but I can see it starting in cargo - like Fedex and UPS and then (after proving itself) slowely migrating to airlines.

 

[JRSLim]

Pilotless Planes

Pilotless planes --
Those things are already all over the place -- they're called 'student solos'

I agree that the public would have a hard time, but like everything else, once they started getting pushed in that
direction, they would follow like sheep for cheap ticket prices and if they were led to believe they were 'safe'.
There might be more hesitation on the part of manufacturers and airlines worried about a mishap and obligatory lawsuits.
Hopefully it will be a long time if it ever does come to pass, and hopefully I'll never have to make the choice to fly on one.
I wonder if they could ever get people to ride a fully automated rollercoaster without human supervision - if not then the autoplane has no chance.

Besides, after watching robot antics like C-3PO.....

 

[Timebuilder]

Recently a new aircraft was unvieled by Airbus that will vindicate their crash at the Paris Airshow.

This new cockpit contains several computers, a man, and a dog.

The computer is there to fly the plane.

The man is there to feed the dog.

The dog is there to bite the man, should he touch something.

 

[Typhoon1244]

It will take so long to make pilotless airliners as reliable as elevators that, by the time it could happen, passenger-carrying fixed-wing aircraft will be irrelevant. It won't be in twenty years. More like eighty or a hundred, I'm betting.

 

[Typhoon1244]

The dog is there to bite the man, should he touch something.

Timebuilder, you're a sharp guy, but c'mon...that joke was getting old when Moses was in second grade!

 

[WrightAvia]

This new cockpit contains several computers, a man, and a dog.

The computer is there to fly the plane.

The man is there to feed the dog.

The dog is there to bite the man, should he touch something.

I met that pilot and his dog while we were all on layover once. I asked the man as I approached his dog, "Sir, does your dog bite?"

He replied, "No".

So I went to pet the dog and it bit me. "Dang!" I said to the guy, "I thought you said your doesn't bite!??!"

"That is not my dog.".

 

[WrightAvia]

This new cockpit contains several computers, a man, and a dog.

The computer is there to fly the plane.

The man is there to feed the dog.

The dog is there to bite the man, should he touch something.

I met that pilot and his dog while we were all on layover once. I asked the man as I approached his dog, "Sir, does your dog bite?"

He replied, "No".

So I went to pet the dog and it bit me. "Dang!" I said to the guy, "I thought you said your dog doesn't bite!??!"

"That is not my dog.".