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Automagic No-Fly-Zone Enforcement

Posted by michael on from the also-works-to-keep-dogs-out-of-your-yard dept.

An anonymous reader writes "SoftWalls is the name of an aviation project at UC-Berkeley that's developing a system for commercial airliners that establishes and enforces no-fly zones. Basically, through GPS, if a plane begins to enter a no-fly zone (eg, around a mountain, or over Lower Manhattan), an alarm goes off in the cockpit. If ignored, the system actively removes control of the plane away from the pilot and co-pilot to steer the plane out of the no-fly zone. The technology is intended as both an accident prevention technique and a deterrent to terrorists planning to ram a building. ABCNews recently profiled the project (with video) and also rode along with a working prototype built by Honeywell that successfully kept a Beechcraft from hitting a mountain."

2 of 543 comments (clear)

  1. A Different Worry... by jjohnson · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I assume that the way this would work is that the standard air corridors, as they neared urban centers and military installations and such, would have soft walls preventing course deviations.

    So what happens during an emergency mechanical failure when the plane is veering out of the standard air corridor, the pilot's wrestling with the stick to get the nose up enough for a non-perpendicular landing, and the soft wall override kicks in, trying to steer the plane back into the air corridor? Remember, it's not a terrorist preventative if it's easily disabled from the cockpit.

    It's easy to imagine that there'd be some sort of cutoff for emergency situtations, just as it's easy to imagine another scenario in which the soft wall override kicks in at the wrong moment, dooming a plane that might have been saved otherwise.

    --
    Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
  2. This will end well by rhysweatherley · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Yeah, this will end well. Someone will configure the wrong co-ordinates by accident (or by design if a cracker). This will lead to some plane running into a mountain as it tries to avoid a phantom no fly zone just to the side of the mountain. And the pilot can do nothing to avoid the collision that he can see coming.

    Never, ever, ever, take control away from the pilot. That's the first rule of air safety. Humans can react to unknown situations in ways that computers cannot.