Unmanned aircrafts

[0707]

Unmanned aircrafts are being more and more used for military purposes will be unmanned aircraft technology be used on civil transportation such as commercial cargos or passenger planes?

would you fly in an Unmanned aircraft?

 

[KENAT]

jmw,

I'd disagree to a point. There are technical issues.

At the moment I don't believe UAVs are 'smart enough' to adequately deal with emergencies if they have passengers on board.

As I said before this isn't a major issue for Military UAV, they at most find somewhere 'safe' to crash. For a vehicle with passengers on board this probably wouldn't be considered adequate.

There is a lot more decision making involved when you have to try and get the A/C to the ground relatively safely, at least to minimize harm to the passengers, than just flying around the sky.

To give you some idea the last I heard DARPA was still sponsoring races of unmanned vehicles across the Mojave Desert. This involves more decision making/is more complex than flying around the relatively empty sky. To the best of my knowledge none of the entries has ever finished the course.

I guess a remote human pilot could take over in emergencies but first you’ve got to give him adequate situational awareness to handle the emergency (difficult with current technology) and second you’ve got to make sure his link to the A/C is secure (difficult to guarantee).

 

[KENAT]

Also thinking about it there will never be truly unmanned (uninhabited is the PC version) Passenger Aircraft. By definition if it has passengers on it is manned, it may be remotely or automatically piloted but it will still be inhabited.

So no I will never fly in an unmanned A/C, and nor will anyone else

However, to really answer the OP yes I think much of the technology will eventually be applied to Cargo and Passenger A/C.

With the current state of technology I don't think I'd fly on an Aircraft that didn't have an onboard pilot to oversea things.

 

[kontiki99]

If the most important piece of onboard safety equipment (flight attendants) were a pilot to the extent that they could execute or assist emergency landings, maybe it could happen.

The ROI on RPVs is realized in the crew cost savings.

RPVs could be harder to hijack, although hijackings aren’t statistically as relevant as accidents.

 

[Shaw169]

Aother point about UAVs is for military, UAVs benefit them with "smaller, lighter, cheaper" programs. I had a discussion with the lead test engineer for the Boeing X-45 at at AIAA dinner conference he spoke at about a year ago, where people brought up some of these points.

Now UAV's taking higher risk mission profiles is great but really, being able to eliminate up to 1/3 of the weight and size needed to support the human part of the plane greatly helps cost and other factors such as stealth and range or endurance.

Onto the other point,
I don't see totally pilot-less or remote pilot commercial plane anywhere soon in the future. My two reasons are, first the computer can not yet be programmed with a sense of self-preservation, responsibility problem solving that people have.

My other reason is that every ship needs a captain, going down to one pilot/captain per flight and and auto-pilot I could see, but you still want a trained person with an understanding of the entire craft and flying to oversee its operation from on board, as well as direct the crew. A flight attendant with a pilots license isn't enough in my opinion.

 

[kontiki99]

The airlines lost the guy with the understanding of the entire aircraft when Flight Engineers disappeared. He used to be someone that started out with hands on mechanical experience.

I work with some great Technical Pilots though. They are our liason with the operations side and they are very sharp too.

You might be surprised at some of the things an average line pilot says though.

I do know of an airline Avionics Engineering Manager for a very well known major airline (former employer) that bragged to us, that he had assured the company VPs that he would do everything in his power to get "those guys" out of the cockpits as soon as possible.

Certainly over the top for today, but it's true.

 

[LittleWheels]

More recent unmanned vehicle race results

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2005/20051012_3025.html

 

[rb1957]

i've always found it reassuring that there are a couple of guys (in its non-gender-specific sense) up front who have a survival instinct. mind you, they bugger it up for everyone every now and then; still i'd prefer that to having some guy on the ground playing Flight Simulator.

but then i also wish they'd kept mechanical flight controls.

 

[scotty7]

Several of the considerations above on the military UAVs don't read into the civilian sense, though.
1) Military UAVs get rid of 1/3 of systems by removing the human - correct, but that won't work for passenger-carrying because the passengers will still need heat, pressurised air, light, windows etc.
2) Removing the human means you don't risk losing the guy you've spent millions of pounds and several years training - I hope that the pilot of a passenger a/c will not be risking his life each time he takes off
3) Removing the human means that the military aircraft is not G-limited by the human making it more manueverable - commercial aircraft don't pull high G
4) Removing the human and putting him on the ground only moves the cost around - you would still need to pay a pilot (until the aircraft was totally autonomous)
5) In going from 2 to 1 pilot, illness happens (remember Airplane! - that's why pilots eat different meals, and on a serious note, one of the prime supected causes of a Trident crash in the UK was the pilot having a heart attack)
6) Ever heard of ALPA?

 

[duck0601]

Scotty7

#6 - No, I have never heard of "ALPA". Please enlighten me. I am a little slow(er) on the uptake today.

Chris

 

[jmw]

Air Line Pilots Association

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[0707]

Nowadays modern oil refineries and nuclear plants have intelligent control systems and emergent shut down systems the paper of control room and outdoor operators is almost just vigilance. Redundant intelligent systems are already working in aircrafts, maybe they will not replace human presence but in the future the paper of the pilot will be mainly as a vigilant of computer information with minimal actions on the commands.

Luis