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Automagic No-Fly-Zone Enforcement
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."
When you can find a way to do it remotely !
"Turn 50 degrees east-north-east... you're about to hit another plane!"
"...I can't"
"Sure you can, just turn!"
"NO... I physically CAN'T, the plane won't let me."
BAM.
Taking the control out of the pilots hands is a bad thing.
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
Why wasn't this been implemented before? I don't care a rat arse about terrorists this and terrorists that, but I have lost a few friends in airplane crashes. With these technologies available at least a decade ago (this project is an implementation of a few old technologies) why isn't this a major requirement for all new planes?
A lot of lives would have been saved if a plane would have at least a small database of known mountains in the flight path. Why don't our planes avoid mountains automatically?
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
>>The technology is intended as both an accident prevention technique and a deterrent to terrorists planning to ram a building
Why do people seem to think that terrorists are just dumb camel jockeys from the middle of the desert who are easily impressed by internal plumbing? If an al Qaeda operative wants to smash a plane into a building, he'll figure out a way to disable such a system.
What happens if I'm on a flight that for whatever the reason HAS to land at La Guardia (low fuel) and cannot navigate AROUND lower Manhattan, but instead wants to go over it. And this system won't let the pilot do that, and by steering around, runs the plane out of fuel and crashes it.
So someone says "Oh, there will be an override for situations like that" -- well, why won't that override get used when someone is bound and detmined to fly a 757 into a tall building? At that point its just another warning system, which is fine, but the computer control part scares me. I like pilots in control when necessary.
Would a catastrophic loss of the GPS system, render these planes unusable? Also, depending on the accuracy of the system(remember they 'skew' the signal for civilian recievers), it could make the planes a bigger target, for the possibly more accurate GPS recievers on them.
This space intentionally left blank.
Everybody's thought about automobile systems that drive for you, and I think most of us suspect it will simply be a matter of time before it happens.
Think about it: Doing a similar system in the air is a great place to learn about how to do this with cars...since asside from takeoff and landing, there's a much bigger tollerance for error in the wide blue skys.
--
Written in the name of sacred jihad
The linux hacker
Terrorists cause planes to crash due to bogus information sent to the GPS, simulating a no fly zone situation, and causing them to crash into buildings.
The FAA has been reported as saying "Yep, it's doing it's job, we couldn't see such a useful feature being exploited".
The FAA is also considering trained monkeies to replace the crew. Passangers, who will be given shock buttons, seems to enjoy this idea... far too much.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
From the FAQ (warning, PDF).
I hate cutting and pasting from PDF files.
Anyway, the statement Today, that plane would be shot down. to me is a bit absolute... is this really true? IF a pilot had problems, called in said problems to the tower and acted according instructions or his own judgement, would he really get shot down? Additionally, I have a problem accepting that jets would scramble fast enough to be able to do so...
That is unless I guess commercial airlines transmit on L1 & L2 frequencies. Provided of course the military sees fit to allow commercial airlines to use that frequency. Which makes me wonder about what juridstiction the United States would have if say a Japan Airlines plane was using that frequency when it pulled in our airspace... Oh well back to work
MoFscker
Currently there are ten (10) TFRs around the US that were enacted soon after 9/11 and/or right before the opening of hostilities against Iraq. There is no need for these TFRs any more, yet the Administration will not instruct the FAA to remove them. The Aircraft Owner's and Pilots Association (AOPA) spends most of their time and money these days fighting the TFRs and ensuring that they are announced with enough lead time so pilots can plan around them and that they are removed in a timely manner. You can read more about it at the AOPA website.
This Administration does not need a technology that would enhance the annoyance they are causing priviate pilots!
The core technologies have been around awhile but I think it's important to remember that GPS technology and fast small CPUs are just now becoming "mature", so it's not out of line that these systems are still in the testing phase. Sure, ten years ago maybe you could build such systems with half of the first class section stuffed with hardware...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I actually currently work on another NASA research project that is taking a slightly different approach. Our model is to not only avoid no-fly-zones but other aircraft (using ADSB reports) as well as bad weather (this relies on weather reports from ground stations.)
The big difference between the 2 projects is that ours only gives possible solution to the pilot and then he has to accept the route deviation rather than removing control from the pilot.
I mean realisticly these solution are bleeding edge and wont make it into service for 20 years. Personally I'd like to see more of a grouund based solution but that probably because my background is ATC systems.
Why wasn't this been implemented before? I don't care a rat arse about terrorists this and terrorists that, but I have lost a few friends in airplane crashes. With these technologies available at least a decade ago (this project is an implementation of a few old technologies) why isn't this a major requirement for all new planes?
See, if a computer program somehow fucks this up, and ends up flying right towards the mountain instead of away from it, the pilots would realize that this *can't* be right but a computer wouldn't. I'm sure they have lots of *warning* systems, but up until now I don't think anyone has thought that overriding the pilot was a good idea, since up until Sept 11th noone thought anyone would *willingly* crash the plane. Maybe it'd save lives if the pilot had a heart attack and collapsed in his seat, but it's a stretch.
And another thing - sabotage. If you can compromise this program, you suddenly have the power to crash *every* plane in the air - complete with uber-searched passengers, armed guards and top security clearance pilots. While it is a lot less likely, the consequences would almost be far more catastrophic.
And face it - hi-jackers in control of a plane can crash it where it does a *lot* of damage anyway - even if it's not dead-center in the Pentagon. If nothing else, fly as close as you can, cut power to the engines and drop like a living dumbfire fuel bomb. How far could you get on a 30,000 feet drop? I'm guessing quite a bit into the "no-fly" zone...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The system being discussed here would take ultimate control of the plane away from the pilot. In the century of powered flight we have just completed, such ideas have have always turned out to be the Wrong Thing.
If we could always trust the flight computers and control systems, we wouldn't even need pilots: today's jetliners are smart enough to fly themselves. The problem is that the systems are just not reliable enough, and the system designers are not prescient enough, to handle every eventuality.
For ages, the question has been A modern corollary might be:
The RAT is the Ram Air Turbine, a propeller driven hydraulic pump tucked under the belly of the 767. The RAT can supply just enough hydraulic pressure to move the control surfaces and enable a dead-stick landing. The loss of both engines caused the RAT to automatically drop into the airstream and begin supplying hydraulic pressure.
The Gimli Glider used this to survive the loss of both engines.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
I'm all for a plane avoiding mountains, and taking over when the pilot is incapacitated so the plane doesn't crash -- but I hate seeing articles about new technology being promoted with "it'll stop those nasty terrorists! Woohoo!"
I'm sure the (surviving) terrorists are ROFL at us scrambling to prevent them repeating something they know they'll never repeat. We need to harden our other systems -- water/electric supplies, who's driving the oil/gas tankers/trucks, etc.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
And I don't think it will work. This is the kind of system you'd see on an airbus, and probably not a boeing- unless it could be defeated easily, like all the autopilot-type systems boeing installs.
Many others have posted great reasons why taking control away from a pilot is a bad thing, so you can read them- but if it's terrorists you're worried about, they now have much more to fear from the passengers than from a computer system. The stakes couldn't be higher now for airline hijackings, and knowing the stakes, no US group of passengers will allow any hijackers to carry out their mission. (Flight 93) This, incidentally, is a social solution to a social problem.
Sure, this kind of thing would be great for terrain avoidance. But I wouldn't bet my life on it. Between jamming, spoofing, misplaced confidence, programming errors and the like, it can be quite problematic.
Basically, you're swapping your trust in the pilot for your trust in the programmer. Not necessarily a good trade.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
One has to ask if this idea is truly about safety or about avoiding 9/11. If you have a system in place like this It will have an overide, otherwise you wouldn't have a pilot in the first place. The overide will be easy to implement because first on the list of possible situations it will be needed will be time critical decisions thus a lengthy/dificult invovled overide process will not work.
In the end you can't defend against human decision making unless you remove the human from the process.... which means you used canned human decision making in the form of code which to my knowledge is not and cannot ( to date ) be made self-correcting. Thus if there is an unforseen circumstance for the code to encounter you don't know what will happen. The code can't think on the fly for itself. So choose your poison. A plane that will be consistently flown even if that consistency invovles a bug that flys into the ground given the proper circumstances or a pilot that can think for itself and do unthinkable things such as fly into a huge skyscraper, or come up with an inovative way to control a plane with differential thrust due to the failure of control surface hydraulics ( actual real world example ). In fact both of those examples are being subjected to CODE fixes for making such actions easier or more difficult, this being an example of 9/11 ( or mountain ) avoidence and the new implementation of a backup directional control system utilizing dissimilar engine thrust rates. But its impossible to account for all scenarios and untill code can be sufficiently capable to deal with unforseen circumstances you have an overide. You draw your own conclusions on what a pilot will decide to trust in an odd situation when presented with loss of control of the aircraft. If your response to that is not to allow that decision then why the hell do you have a pilot in the cockpit to begin with ?
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
"I think it's both hilarious and sad that we're still focusing on terrorists wrt airplanes. They had their chance, and they used it to their great advantage. They'll come at us from a different angle now, knowing that they'll never again surprise us in that particular way."
First sane thought I've seen in this thread.
Over many years we had trained ourselves to cooperate with airplane hijackers and wait to see what they wanted. The 9/11 terrorists knew this and used it against us.
They won't do it again, because they know that every person on the plane will try and rip their throats out.
They'll watch, see what we aren't paying attention to, and use that next time. Bad news for us - we cannot pay attention to everything.
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
You make a good point, but I think you (and others) might be polarizing the issue more than necessary.
I can imagine this being implemented as a restriction of options rather than prescriptive flight path. As you mention, pilots already deal with a myriad of decision factors, and this would act as another. If you need to put your 747 into an Immelmann or Split-S, just make sure you're not doing it into a mountain -- because the computer won't let you. The computer won't dictate what you have to do, just what you can't.
We see these restrictions all around us. Water drums near highway barriers. Curbs on sidewalks. Large rocks surrounding bridge supports. Pilots are just beginning to benefit from the fact that these influences can be virtual.
It all goes downhill from first post
I agree with the others replying to this post in that there would be no doubt that the plane could be destroyed if desired, and little doubt that it would.
However, something I'd like to check - I Am Not An American - isn't the White House kinda surrounded by Washington and lots of people (in a general kind of way). Where do you shoot it down that doesn't do more damage to the surrounding populace? Not all plane crashes end like Con Air.
What's to stop terrorists for distorting the GPS signals and making the plane think that a mountain isn't where the mountain is? And if the terrorist can broadcast multiple spoof signals (spoofing a constellation), they could steer a plane to any location by simply moving the no-fly barrier to herd the plane to the desired (but undesirable) location.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I can't believe people would be soo strong to propose fully computer-controlled airplanes, without manual override, while most of our nations metro systems have drivers.
The factors that affect flight (I'm a private pilot pp-asel) are soo diverse and include decision making far more complex than "should I turn here to avoid airspace xyz". In an emergency - say an engine failure, oil leak, etc, pilots *are* allowed to violate any airspace restriction to avoid injury / deaths. Here are the federal regulations that are pertinent:
FAR = "federal aviation regulations" which comprise section 14 of the Federal Law Registry.
FARs part 91 = General Operating and Flight Rules
* general (non commercial) aviation falls under part 91.
FAR 91.3b = "In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency".
Far 91.141 restricts flight in the vicinity of the president and president's related parties. It is clearly in part 91, and can be deviated from in an emergency.
My flight instructor had a partial engine failure in a twin engine aircraft during training at Oakland - and dealing with the emergency required flying below a the legal 1000' altitude above populated areas. In fact he flew at 500' in the pattern which is below the "500' from people or property rule". If the plane attempted to climb on a partially failed engine, they would have likely crashed and all (3 aboard) perished.
There are 1000s of anecdotes, but feel free to go over to rec.aviation.piloting or r.a.student to read more. Having computers override pilots is a very bad idea - in the minds of virtually all actual pilots.
The likelyhood of true disasters coming from airplanes that take control from pilots is pretty high in my book. The likelyhood of armed terrorists being able to disable such a system also seems pretty high... ever heard of a wire-cutter? How about a gps jammer?
Final note: GPS is not perfect! I've flown two different C172s with Garmin 430 and 530 equipment, and both misplaced class-B (the only airspace below 18000' requiring a clearance to enter) airspaces by several nautical miles. If such gps ever misplaced a mountaintop, or the plane's position by even a couple of miles, it could forcebly cause a crash under near-ideal conditions.