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Unpiloted Passenger Jet Tests
spacepingu writes "The UK military recently tested a remote-controlled passenger jet over south-west England. Although the pilot was sitting in the back of the aging BAC 1-11, he controlled it entirely using the 'UAV Command and Control Interface (UAVCCI)'. This also allowed him to operate several virtual UAVs in a simulated attack scenario. The ultimate goal is for a fighter pilot to control a swarm of attack UAVs alongside his own plane. Next March, a Tornado fighter pilot will use the UAVCCI to fly the unpiloted BAC1-11 as well as several simulated UAVs, all from the cockpit of his own jet."
Ender's game = prior art ? :)
The cockpit of the future will have a button to fly the airplane, the pilot, and a dog. The pilot is there to feed the dog and the dog is there to bite the pilot in case he reaches for the button.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
So, in the future, someone can hack your passenger flight and take control of it remotely? Hope they stock clean underwear along with the barf bags on these flights.
Not that I see this coming to commercial flights any time soon (if ever), but: having the pilot not actually on the plane would make airplane hijacking a hell of a lot harder. If the pilot can't be personally threatened, and isn't directly faced with passengers being threatened*, it would be easier for "don't go along" training to be effective.
*Does anyone have a link to that study where people were asked to press a button to "electrocute" other people, and how many were willing to do it as long as they were told by an authority figure it was ok? Were there also results regarding whether or not the subject could see the person being "electrocuted?"
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
But I want my pilot to go down in flames with me.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I want those risks to be as low as possible. We should put these drone navigation/steering controls into planes with pilots. Let the pilots steer for 15 minutes an hour, to keep them engaged. Let them analyze the air traffic data, with visual confirmations, for their airspace, shared with each other and on the ground. Keep all the telemetry streamed to the global network in realtime, instead of trapped in mysterious black boxes on the endangered planes. Put their bodies on the line, and their minds to work on keeping everyone safe.
We can use these automations and networks to completely revolutionize air safety. From accidents, collisions, hijackings, onboard sickness and other other incidents. Don't just put pilots out of work: make the investments in the crew return many times more, with more effective use of their skills and motivations.
"The Bravery of Being Out of Range" by Roger Waters
--
make install -not war
but somehow I didn't expect they'd put guns on them. Silly me.
Obviously you hang out with a different kind of R/C geeks than I do.
I've seen a lot of planes that are built with an extra servo for use as a bomb release (also good for clicking the shutter of a camera). And I know some guys that tried to put CO2-powered BB cannons on R/C aircraft, but they ended up just being too hard to use and too heavy to be practical. The gas systems required limit them to rather large aircraft and helis, the vibration causes them to jam a lot, and the obvious safety issues keep you from flying them in most places. Plus unless you have full-auto guns (they do exist) you can't do a whole lot with them, even in ground attack or against targets.
However, they're pretty cool when mounted on balsa-wood ships...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This makes each of the UAVs semi-autonomous: they fly straight and level on their own and can be given simple orders using a point-and-click interface on what Williams calls "a simple, flat, moving map".
and later...
The remote pilot has pushbutton commands for each UAV, telling it to loiter, undertake a search pattern, or attack a target," Williams explains.
If this is the kind of game we're playing, we have NO chance against the Koreans.
Poll: was that the best Starcraft joke I could have chosen? What other jokes could I have used?
What about a pilot sitting in the pilot's seat?
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Unpiloted passenger aircraft are certainly a bad idea, but I could see a place for it. Think about cargo aircraft, particularly ones on trans-oceanic routes. You could build whole fleets of very inexpensive cargo carriers, because you wouldn't have to have a flight deck or windows, or run all of the control lines up to the front of the plane (all those miles of wiring); the computer "flying" the plane doesn't even all have to be in one spot, it could be in semi-independent pieces throughout the airframe. That means the only limitations to the design are technical and aerodynamic.
Such a plane could fly low and slow to save fuel, because it wouldn't have to worry about pilots or passengers getting tired. And if the plane started to deviate course and fly towards a populated area, you'd shoot it down or self-destruct it up while it's still somewhere safe, just like a Range Safety Officer does for satellite/rocket launches.
The lower cost of these flights could bring air cargo to parts of the world where it's currently not economically feasible (basically anyplace outside the First World or its major manufacturing centers), or bring goods that currently aren't economical to ship by air. Anything that lowers the cost of transportation can have wide-ranging effects.
I think there's a definite market for self-piloted aircraft for cargo duty, on long-haul flights over unpopulated areas.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"But how do you control multiple vehicles moving at supersonic speeds in 3 dimensional space?"
You shut off the navigation system, close your eyes, and let your feelings guide you. Or you tank up on Arrakis spice before flying.
Where were you when the voynix came?
I always had some comfort knowing that if I was in a plane crash the pilot would be killed along with everybody else. I imagine it would make a good point of conversation with the other screaming passengers. J'know I could turn to the guy next to me and say 'Well at least the pilot is dieing with us' but then he'd say 'Yeah, but think about it this way. He's probably got insurance, his family will get a big payoff for his incompetance while we're all totally frigging screwed here' Then I'd probably think for a minute and say 'Well okay, how bout this. Let's storm the cockpit and force the pilot into a parachute and throw him off the plane so he'll survive to get fired' then the guy would say 'well that wouldn't really work either, he'll just claim he went out to get help. He'll be hailed as a hero, and he'll probably recieve some great reward for that'. Then I'd probably say 'Okay, what if.. WE took the parachutes, escaped the crashing plane and survived so we could tell everybody that the pilot was incompetant?' Then he'd say 'Once again, that wouldn't work. Historically speaking airplane crash survivors are the most hated out of all accident survivors. If we don't get flogged just on the virtue of our survival we'll probably be thrown in jail for trying to slander the pilot'. Then I'd say 'You know it's times like this I wish airplanes were remote controlled. If the pilot was back at the airport and we all died he'd get fired, and his life might be ruined because of that' Then he'd say 'Yes, that does seem like it would be some small comfort'